


Some Cupid Kills with Arrows

by poisonivory



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Green Arrow (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood/Arsenal (Comics)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Eventual Happy Ending, Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Heroes in Crisis (DCU), Resurrection, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27479695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisonivory/pseuds/poisonivory
Summary: Roy has been dead for a little over a year, and Jason isn't anywhere close to coping with his loss. Then Roy's ex, Cheshire, comes to Jason with shocking news and a plea for his help. As if that wasn't enough, there's a new assassin on the scene, and he's targeting archers. Jason couldn't save Roy, but maybe he can save Roy's family - and maybe there's more to this mysterious assassin than meets the eye.
Relationships: Roy Harper/Jason Todd
Comments: 316
Kudos: 458





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is: the post-HiC, shamelessly Arrowfamily-centric fix-it fic you've been waiting (?) for! This is, of course, set after Heroes in Crisis, but you don't need to have actually read it to follow the events of this story. I took a "yes, and" approach to canon, including as many elements from post-Crisis, New 52, and Rebirth as I could, and even a little bit of Arrowverse - i.e. Emiko Queen exists but so do Connor Hawke and Mia Dearden. I may note specific choices I made on a chapter-by-chapter basis for clarification purposes.
> 
> CW: It's relatively mild, but a couple of characters express death wishes/suicidal ideation over the course of the story (especially in Chapter 2 and Chapter 7), so please take care of yourself if that's a sensitive issue for you.
> 
> Thank you to [mizzmarvel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizzmarvel/pseuds/mizzmarvel) for the beta and [Shenanigans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/pseuds/Shenanigans) for faithful cheerleading! New chapters will update on Mondays.
> 
> The title comes from _Much Ado About Nothing_ , which I think Jason would appreciate if I hadn't made him suffer so much in this story:
> 
> _If it proves so, then loving goes by haps:  
>  Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps._  
> 

The real bitch of being alone, Jason thought, was how quickly you got used to _not_ being alone—and how much longer it took to settle into it again.

It had taken months after his mother died for him to start to find some kind of balance, some feeble way of moving forward, as childish and hardscrabble as it had been. He’d barely gotten started on building a new life on his own when Bruce had shown up, and yet somehow in no time at all he could no longer imagine life without him or Alfred in it.

Then had come the _years_ of raw, aching rejection, the bitterness of finding himself discarded again and cast out, and he’d sworn to himself that there would be no more partners and certainly no more _family_. No more counting on others to be there for him when in the end, they never stuck around.

He’d broken that vow before he realized he was doing it. And now at this rate, he’d be pushing fifty before he stopped looking over his shoulder during a fight and expecting to see a flash of red hair, the blur of a crimson arrow.

But he _was_ alone, especially with Artemis and Biz off doing their own things, and he needed to get used to it. Expecting someone who wasn’t there to watch your back in the Narrows was a good way to die stupidly.

Luckily, he’d been trained well enough that he didn’t really _need_ an extra pair of eyes to know he was being followed. Whoever it was was good—Jason hadn’t actually seen or heard them. He just _felt_ them, like an itch at the back of his neck. Which meant Bat- or League-trained, and a Bat would have made themselves known by now.

On the other hand, no one in the League knew the Narrows like Jason did. He slipped off of Park Row and onto Robinson Lane, doubled back through an empty space that wouldn’t have existed if the right contractors had been paid off twenty years ago, and waited.

There. A flicker of shadows. Jason sprang forward, his stalker moved—

—and suddenly his gun was at Cheshire’s temple and her nails were at his throat.

“Hood,” she said.

“Cheshire.”

This was bad. His collar was reinforced kevlar, but there was just enough of a gap between it and the opening of his helmet for her to reach bare skin, and she was good enough to do it even in her death throes. His bullet would kill her faster than her poison would kill him, but that would be small consolation when he drowned in his own vomit inside the helmet. “Little outside of your usual hunting grounds, aren’t you? There’s no one in this neighborhood worth paying your kind of fee to kill.”

“I was looking for you,” she said, looking at him sidelong. Her hair hung into her face, making her expression hard to read.

Jason’s finger tightened on the trigger. “On whose dime?”

“No one’s. This isn’t a hit.” She withdrew her nails slowly, like she was trying not to spook him. “I need your help.”

Jason took a step back, out of range of her hands and any blades she was carrying, but kept his gun trained on her. He and Cheshire had never worked closely together during his time with the League, but he knew not to trust her as far as he could throw her. She was always running games upon games.

Or maybe he just didn’t like her. And maybe that dislike hadn’t started with the League, but when she’d taken a shine to a certain redheaded former partner of his, one who’d had enough bullshit in his life without throwing in a toxic relationship with a remorseless killer on top of it.

It didn’t matter either way. He didn’t trust her, and he was right not to. End of story.

“What makes you think I would help you with anything?” he asked. “Seriously, I’m genuinely curious. I thought you were smarter than that.”

She lifted her chin. She wasn’t wearing her usual outfit, just jeans and a hoodie. It made her look more human, more vulnerable. Jason reminded himself that that was almost certainly part of whatever this scheme was.

“Three nights ago, someone broke into my home. That’s not an easy thing to do,” she said, and pushed her hair out of her face. There was a livid purple bruise at her temple, visible even with half the street lamps burned out. “He overpowered me. That’s not easy either. And he…”

She paused, like she was gathering her strength. Took a breath. Jason had no idea she was this good of an actress.

“He took my baby.”

There were times Jason was really glad the helmet helped him maintain a poker face. This was one of them. “Your _what?_ ”

“My daughter. She’s just over three months old. Her name is Lian.” Cheshire didn’t cry; she didn’t look anywhere close to it. Strangely, it made her more convincing. “She’s all I care about in the world.”

“Even supposing I believe a word of this, why would I help you?” Jason asked. “We’re not exactly friends.” Kids in trouble were his Achilles heel and he’d never been good at disguising that, but no one League-trained was likely to rely on the goodness of someone’s heart as sufficient motivation. Or the not-totally-a-lost-cause-ness of someone’s heart, in Jason’s case.

“I don’t think you’ll help me,” she said. “I _know_ you’ll help Lian.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

Her gaze was dark and merciless and utterly without pretense. “Because Roy Harper was her father.”

*

Roy had been dead for a little over a year. Sometimes it felt more like ten, like Jason had somehow dragged himself through an endless purgatory without Roy’s easy laugh and unshakeable loyalty. Other times the grief was fresh and raw: when his phone lit up and it was never the voice he expected on the other end; when he woke and forgot for a few groggy, blessed moments until it all came rushing back.

Roy had been in his grave twice as long as Jason had.

It felt especially raw now, sitting in a safe house with Cheshire, an uneasy detente over the coffee table. The safe house wasn’t one of his favorites, which was a deliberate choice on his part, since he’d have to discard it now that she knew the location. But at least here they could talk freely, and Jason could focus entirely on her instead of keeping an eye out for any nasty surprises.

Well. Any _more_ nasty surprises.

“It was while he was with the Titans, that last time,” Cheshire said, confirming what Jason had already assumed from the timeline she’d hinted at. Before Roy had fallen off the wagon and decided to go to Sanctuary. After Jason had walked out on him.

Maybe if Jason hadn’t walked out on him, Roy would have never felt like he needed Sanctuary. But Jason had gone down that road too many times to let himself wander down it now.

“We just sort of...fell back together,” Cheshire went on.

Jason fixed her with a thoroughly disbelieving look. He’d discarded both the helmet and the domino mask; Cheshire— _Jade_ , he supposed, since she wasn’t in uniform—knew perfectly well who he was.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine, yeah, we were on opposite sides of a job and I was conning him. But I didn’t actually plan to sleep with him again.”

Jason couldn’t help his snort. “Did anyone ever _plan_ to sleep with Roy?” Now it was Jade’s turn to give him a look, and Jason’s turn to roll his eyes. “Get your jollies elsewhere, Cheshire. We were just friends.”

“Sure,” she drawled. “Anyway, I had a feeling after a couple weeks, but I figured I’d wait. Tests aren’t reliable until three weeks after.” The faintly amused look on her face dropped away. “Sanctuary blew up the day before I planned to take the test.”

“And you’re sure it was Roy?” Jason asked.

Her eyes narrowed. “Fuck you. _Yes_ , I’m sure it was Roy. Here.” He tensed as she shifted, but all she did was pull her phone out of her back pocket, unlock it, and open up the camera roll. “ _Look_ at her.”

The camera roll was full of pictures of a very young baby, which was jarring enough—Jason would never have pegged Jade as the sentimental type. It was enough to make him indulge her and examine the pictures more closely for a resemblance to his friend, even though all new babies looked like unformed potatoes to Jason.

The baby girl in the photos had Jade’s dark eyes and jet-black hair, and the round cheeks and little snub nose of all babies. She didn’t look like Roy. She looked like a baby.

But.

But she looked like _Roy_.

Jason swallowed. “I don’t trust you.”

“Smart man.”

“I don’t _like_ you.”

“You’re not my favorite person either, Hood, believe me.”

Jason stared at the photos of Roy’s infant daughter for another long moment, then handed the phone back to Jade. “Tell me about the man who took her.”

Jade shook her head. “Masked and hooded, all in black. I couldn’t even tell you hair or skin color. Not as tall as you, maybe five-nine, five-ten? He was good. I didn’t hear him until he was already in the nursery.”

“So, League-trained,” Jason said. It took one of their own to get past the best of them, and Jade was one of the best.

“That’s my assumption, yes.”

“Weapons?” Most League members had distinctive weapons they favored, Jason and Jade both being prime examples of the habit.

“He didn’t use any.”

“Shit,” Jason muttered. The questions were mostly rote. Jade was neither stupid nor a coward; if she’d had any way to identify the kidnapper, he’d already be dead. But anyone who could overpower her in hand-to-hand combat was someone to be wary of. “So what’d you do to piss off the League?”

“Nothing!” she protested. “I did my service and walked away with the full permission of the Demon’s Head. If he wished to recall me, he would. Besides, the man who attacked me wasn’t wearing a League uniform, and it’s not like Ra’s to punish someone without _telling_ them they’re being punished.”

All true, which meant they had a rogue League member on their hands. “Why’d you wait three days?”

“I thought I could find him on my own, but he covered his tracks too well. I could have gone to someone like Deathstroke or Calculator, but I don’t want them having that kind of leverage over me. The fewer people in my line of work who know Lian exists, the better.” Jade’s lip curled. “I need the Detective, but he wouldn’t help me. So someone trained by him will have to do.”

“You really know how to sweet talk a guy, huh?” Jason drawled. “So obvious what Roy saw in you. Why not go to Nightwing? You’re old sparring buddies, and he was Roy’s friend, too.” Saying Roy’s name in the past tense twice in so many sentences sat like ashes on his tongue.

“When I find the man who took my child, I’ll kill him,” Jade said, very calmly. “Nightwing would try to stop me.”

Jason paused. “The trail is cold. I might not find anything, or I might find something too late, and with kidnapping cases…” It felt like betraying Roy to say it out loud. “She’s probably already dead.”

“She’s not,” Jade said in a tone that left no room for argument.

“Look, a mother’s instinct is admirable, but…”

“Don’t pull that paternalistic bullshit on me,” Jade snapped. “If he wanted my daughter dead, he would have killed her in front of me. He took her alive. That means she’s _still_ alive.”

It made sense. Still. “And if she’s not…?” Jason pressed.

She met his eyes. “Lian is Roy’s daughter. If she’s dead, you’ll help me kill the man who did it.”

Jason was trying not to kill these days. He’d made promises to Bruce, to the rest of his family.

He’d made promises to Roy, too. Even the ones he’d never said out loud.

“I’ll help you kill the man who did it,” he agreed.

*

Jade, like Jason, had safe houses all over the globe, but the one Lian had been taken from was in London. Jason reluctantly prepared himself for a trip across the Atlantic to see what evidence could still be found after what would be four days by the time he got there, but Jade stopped him before he could book a flight.

“Can you run blood samples?” she asked.

“I have access,” he said carefully. The Cave had everything he needed, but there was no way he was taking _her_ there, and on the off chance she didn’t know about its existence, he wasn’t going to be the one to tell her.

She pulled a sealed gallon bag out of her pocket. There was a crumpled wad of bloodstained fabric inside. “The shirt I was wearing that night,” she explained. “He might have gotten away, but I left my mark on him.”

“And he didn’t drop dead of poison a minute later?” Jason asked.

She raised an eyebrow. “Believe it or not, I don’t put poison in my kitchen knives.”

“Another illusion shattered.”

Jade didn’t want to part ways, but since Jason refused to take her to the Cave, she didn’t really have a choice. In the end, they exchanged numbers and made a plan to meet at Gotham International Airport in the early morning. “You leave without me, or you give up on this, and it won’t be a kitchen knife I use on you,” she threatened.

“Again, so easy to see why Roy liked you.”

But it _was_ easy, wasn’t it? Jason couldn’t shake the thought as he pointed his motorcycle toward the manor. It wasn’t just that Jade was beautiful, though Roy had never had much resistance to a pretty face. Roy was attracted to danger, had always thrown himself into it laughing, like he didn’t much care if he came out the other side. It had always struck Jason as a bitter irony that Roy had been killed during one of the few times he was actually trying to take care of himself.

Roy also didn’t much care how people treated him. He almost seemed to _like_ being treated like shit sometimes, or at least think he deserved it. Must have, or he wouldn’t have stuck around Jason so long.

But Jason’s regrets wouldn’t help Roy’s daughter now. Forcing the thought out of his mind, Jason sped up as he approached the limits of the city proper.

He’d almost hit the suburbs when his communicator crackled to life: “Mayday! Calling for any support, ASAP! I have a teammate down and we are under attack!”

It was Tim. Jason was turning before he consciously told his body to. “Red Robin, what’s your location?”

“Broderick and Ninth.”

That wasn’t far. Jason took a turn so sharp he went over the sidewalk and was grateful that there were rarely pedestrians out so late at night in nice neighborhoods like this.

Too nice a neighborhood for Tim to have run into trouble he couldn’t handle. “I’ll be there in two. Who are you with?”

“Arrowette. There’s a—dammit!” Tim was breathing hard and sounded frantic. Jason heard something pinging off metal and suspected Tim was using his bo staff. “Who the hell is this guy?”

“New player?”

“Maybe. Guy in a mask and hood, all black. No symbol and I don’t recognize the outfit,” Tim said.

Jason frowned. Could it be Lian’s kidnapper? No, that was too much of a coincidence.

“He’s an archer,” Tim added, and Jason nearly drove into a mailbox.

“ _What?_ ”

“Hurry up!” Tim hissed.

Jason pushed the bike even faster, and could soon hear the sounds of a fight coming from above. When he was close enough, he pulled his grapple gun from his belt and let it pull him to the right roof, leaving the bike to careen into a nearby wall. Well, maybe he could buff it out.

And there was Tim, crouched in a defensive position in front of a blonde girl in red. Jason barely spared them a glance, too focused on their opponent.

He wasn’t prepared for the first thing he felt to be disappointment, a disappointment so profound his stomach roiled. Their attacker was exactly what Tim had said: a man all in black, in a hood and a mask that covered his entire face, already turning to draw a bead on Jason. And Roy was _dead_. Of course it wasn’t him. It could never have been him.

But apparently the word “archer” meant only one thing to Jason.

“Back the fuck off, William Tell,” Jason said, drawing both guns at once, pushing down the desperate feeling of missing Roy. Other people could draw a bow. “You’re not the only one standing with a ranged weapon, now.”

There was a frozen moment where the archer kept his arrow trained on Jason’s heart, and Jason kept his guns trained on where the archer’s eyes had to be, under the mask. Jason refused to flinch, even though he knew he was in trouble. An arrow could pierce kevlar where a bullet wouldn’t.

The archer suddenly pivoted, loosing the arrow in the same moment so that it whistled past Jason’s side towards the girl. There was another _ping!_ as Tim deflected it with his bo staff, and Jason, distracted, missed his chance to fire until the archer was already booking it off the roof.

Fuck. Jason started to pursue, but Tim’s anxious voice called him back: “ _Hood._ ”

Shit, right, the girl was hurt. Jason backed closer to them, keeping his guard up and his weapons out in case the archer returned. “She okay?”

“She’ll live.” That was the girl’s voice, tight with pain but amused.

Jason glanced down and was hit with another pang. Her costume wasn’t much like Roy’s, except that it was red all over, and Roy looked a hell of a lot less like captain of the cheerleading squad than she did—but it _was_ a red costume, and that _was_ a quiver beside her and a bow gripped in one hand.

Jason wasn’t sure why fate was throwing so many archers at him tonight. It didn’t really make up for the one he’d lost.

The girl—Arrowette, Tim had said—was struggling to sit up despite the black arrow protruding through the meat of her shoulder. Tim hovered like an anxious mama hen. “Cissie, you shouldn’t be moving…”

“Okay, I’ll lie here on this roof until I get better,” she retorted, but the parts of her face Jason could see under the mask were grayish, and she leaned heavily against Tim as he helped her to her feet.

“I’ve got my bike. We’ll take her back to the Cave,” Jason said. “We shouldn’t take the arrow out until we get there.” Because she might bleed out otherwise, but he didn’t say it out loud. The girl could probably take it, but Tim was already fretting plenty. No point in making it worse.

Luckily his bike was still in one piece after its collision with the wall. It wasn’t designed for three people, but neither of Jason’s passengers was very big, and Tim kept Cissie sandwiched between him and Jason’s back in case she got woozy from blood loss or shock and threatened to topple off. They couldn’t go very fast and they looked like idiots, but they made it to the Cave intact.

Bruce and Duke were still out on patrol, and Jason was pretty sure Damian was on the West Coast with the Titans, but Cass was at the Batcomputer and Alfred was patching up what looked like one of Damian’s spare tunics. They both looked up as Jason drove in through the hidden garage entrance.

“My word!” Alfred said, standing up and putting the tunic down. “Master Ti—Red Robin, fetch the medical cart. Red Hood, please help our guest to the operating table.”

“It’s okay, Alfred, she knows my name,” Tim said as he ran for the cart that held Alfred’s medical supplies and started hooking various things up.

“And the rest of our secret identities don’t matter, I suppose?” Jason asked, keeping his tone light so Tim would know he didn’t actually care. Tim needed to be teased a bit when he got in his head like this.

He lifted Arrowette in his arms, careful of her shoulder. She weighed practically nothing, even with all her gear. Who let this kid out on the streets?

Well, given her theme, Oliver Queen, probably. But Jason already had plenty to lay at that asshole’s door; he didn’t need to add more.

“I know your name, too,” Arrowette said as he carried her to the operating table. She sounded in pain, but lucid. “You’re Jason. You were Roy’s friend.”

Right. Tim had called her Cissie. Cissie was Roy’s little sister—the new one, the one who’d only found out Ollie was her father a bit before Roy died.

“One of them,” he said, putting her down on the table.

“Well, he talked about you the most,” she said.

Jason didn’t have a response for that. He wanted to walk away, but he needed to stay and keep her propped up in a half-sitting position, since she couldn’t lie down with an arrow protruding out the back of her shoulder.

Luckily, Alfred and Tim were there, hands sanitized and gloved. “It’s lovely to meet you, Miss King-Jones, although I do wish it had been under better circumstances,” Alfred said in that comforting tone of his. “I’m afraid we’ll have to remove that arrow. Master Jason, will you hold her?”

Having an arrow removed from her shoulder couldn’t have been fun, but Cissie took it like a champ, which was Roy all over. He’d always tried to brush off serious injuries, though a stubbed toe or mild cold had him whining like a baby until Jason made the appropriate soothing noises.

Not that it was relevant, Jason reminded himself. Roy and this girl weren’t even biologically related.

Which in turn reminded him of the bloodstained shirt in his pocket. Once the arrow was out, Jason left the disinfecting and bandaging of the wound to Alfred and Tim, and started the analysis of the blood on the shirt. He grabbed the removed arrow and started a basic forensics check on that too, while he was at it. Tim was going to do it anyway, might as well give him a head start.

Cass had slipped upstairs during the arrow removal and returned a bit later with a teapot and a pile of sandwiches. Now she pushed a cup of steaming tea in Jason’s direction. “Drink.”

“Thanks,” he said, finally remembering to tug off his helmet and mask, and took a sip. The tea was strong and black, loaded with milk and sugar. They all took their tea different ways normally, but in a household run by an Englishman, there was only one restorative after an injury, even if you weren’t the one who was injured. “What are you doing home?”

She held up her wrist, wrapped in an Ace bandage. “Sprained. Bruce said stay,” she said. “You okay?”

“I only showed up at the end,” he said. “Guy ran off when I got there.”

“Not what I asked,” she said.

Jason bit the inside of his lip. “I’m fine,” he said. Lying to Cass was a pointless exercise, but since she’d know the truth no matter what, why bother saying it?

Tim and Cissie joined them at the lab table while Alfred cleaned up the triage area. Cissie had her shoulder heavily bandaged and her arm in a sling. “Hey, Cass,” she said, and Cass smiled a greeting back.

“How’s the shoulder?” Jason asked.

She made a face. “Don’t love it, but I’ll survive. Thanks for the backup.”

“Yeah, thank you,” Tim said, pushing a cup of tea into Cissie’s hands. He’d taken his mask off and could have packed half the manor in the bags under his eyes.

Jason shrugged, uncomfortable. “Got started on the arrow for you,” he said. “No prints. Wooden shaft, broadhead, fletched with real feathers.”

Cissie leaned in and squinted at it. “Turkey,” she said. “And it’s a fixed blade. Huh.”

“What?” Tim asked.

“No, he’s just old-fashioned,” Cissie said. “He was using a longbow. Recurves are older—a lot older—but longbows have that classic Robin Hood feel. Ollie—I mean, my dad—I mean,” she stumbled a bit, like she wasn’t sure how to refer to him, “Green Arrow. He uses a longbow most of the time, and he makes his own arrows out of wood if they’re not trick arrows. The rest of us use recurves and composite arrows.” She shrugged, a little defensively. “Look, I’m not a hundred and seventy pound man who’s been shooting for decades, I’ll take the extra power.”

“Roy used a compound bow,” Jason said without meaning to.

“Roy liked tech,” Cissie said, with a faint, sad smile. “If it was new and complicated, he wanted it. Made most of our trick arrows, too.”

Jason pushed down the sudden urge to snap at her that he knew that, of _course_ he knew that. How many times had he seen Roy fiddling with new arrow designs, strands of copper hair falling into his eyes and the pink tip of his tongue poking out of his mouth? How many times had he watched those clever, dextrous fingers putting together an impossibly tiny payload that would inevitably wind up saving their lives within a week?

“So why did evil Robin Hood attack you?” he said instead.

“No idea,” Tim said. “We were just doing a regular patrol, getting Cissie back in the game.”

“I just came out of retirement,” she explained. Jason wasn’t sure how a seventeen-year-old had time to become a superhero, retire, and come out of retirement, but he supposed he had less right to throw stones than most.

“We were heading back here when the archer came out of nowhere and attacked Cissie,” Tim said. “And I mean _just_ Cissie—he barely glanced at me.”

“Yeah? Who’d you piss off lately?” Jason asked her.

“Besides my mom? No one that I know of,” she said. “Like I said, I’ve been retired. I haven’t had time to start reassembling a rogues gallery.” She paused. “Well, assembling, I guess. I never really had one.”

“Your father does,” Cass pointed out.

Tim looked thoughtful. “She’s got a point. How many of Green Arrow’s enemies would come after you to get to him?”

“I didn’t think any would!” Cissie said. “It’s not really common knowledge that he’s my dad. Even I haven’t known for that long.”

“That’s the wrong question,” Jason said. “How many of them are _archers?_ ”

Now it was Cissie’s turn to look thoughtful. “Hm. Well, there’s my aunt Emiko’s mom, Shado, but she’s not really a _villain_ , exactly. And I don’t know why she’d come after me. And there’s Emiko’s dad...well, not her real dad, my grandfather was her real dad, but the guy who raised her. Komodo. But he’s dead.”

“Every time you talk about your family tree I get a cluster headache,” Tim said.

“Try living it,” Cissie said. “And then there’s Merlyn, which I guess would make the most sense.”

“Footage?” Cass asked Tim.

“Yeah, hang on.” Tim turned to the Batcomputer, minimizing Jason’s in-progress blood analysis. “Jason, why are you tracing Cissie’s blood? She’s right here.”

“Not hers. Different case,” Jason said, trying not to sound squirrelly. Judging by Tim’s raised eyebrow, he hadn’t succeeded.

“Sure. Okay, here we go.” Tim pulled up the feed from his uniform camera, which streamed directly to the Batcomputer whenever he was in the field. Bruce had once suggested Jason add one to his gear, and Jason had laughed for five full minutes.

They watched as the archer sprang at them, firing inhumanly fast as he flipped through the air. It _had_ to be an established rogue. This guy could give Roy a run for his money, and there were only maybe half a dozen people on the planet who were as good as Roy. No way one would come out of nowhere.

But…

“Not Merlyn,” Cass declared, and they all looked at her. “Trained me. With my father. One of his...experts.” She shook her head. “Not him.”

“He’s wearing a mask,” Cissie pointed out.

“If Cass says it’s not him, it’s not him,” Tim said, pausing the video. “You think Green Arrow would have any ideas?”

Cissie shrugged, then winced as it jarred her injured shoulder. “Maybe? Can you send me the footage?”

“Sure.”

Jason squinted at the frozen image. Could this be Lian’s kidnapper? It didn’t make any sense. Why would a man kidnap a baby in London without killing her or her assassin mother, then fly to Gotham three days later to try to murder a teenage superhero with a career so obscure as to be negligible?

But Cissie’s assailant looked exactly like Jade had described the kidnapper. And both cases involved the daughters of archers.

Jason took out his phone and snapped a picture of the archer’s image on screen, then texted it to Cheshire, along with: _This your guy?_

_Yes,_ she texted back instantly. _Where are you?_

Well, shit.

All the teenage vigilantes in the Cave were staring at him. “Care to share with the class?” Tim asked. “Who’d you just text?”

Jason wasn’t sure he wanted to answer that yet, so he didn’t. “The blood I’m testing? It’s evil Robin Hood’s.”

“What?” Cissie said.

“How’d you get it?” Tim asked. “He didn’t come anywhere near us.”

“I didn’t get it tonight. I didn’t know they were the same man until I sent that text.” Jason nudged Tim out of the way and pulled up the blood analysis. The computer should have finished scanning the sample he’d given it and running it against global law enforcement databases, not to mention the Justice League’s and Bruce’s own private records.

“That’s not really a helpful answer,” Tim said.

Jason ignored him. There was an idea percolating in the back of his mind; an impossible idea, but one that he hadn’t been able to shake since Tim had said the word “archer.” That had only grown stronger when he’d watched the footage and seen the archer in motion again; the breathtaking speed, the grace of his aerial.

It would still leave them with a lot of questions. But it would answer the one that had been echoing inside of Jason for a year.

He clicked on the blood test results.

_No matches found._

“Merlyn’s blood is in Bruce’s database. So is Shado’s,” Tim said. “They’re known League of Assassins associates.” His gaze, when it slid to Jason’s face, was a little too sharp. “Roy’s is in the database, too. All former Titans and Leaguers are.”

Dammit. Couldn’t Bruce have replaced Jason with a stupider kid?

“Roy?” Cissie echoed. “You thought that was _Roy?_ He’s. Well.” Her mouth twisted with sudden grief. “He’s dead.”

“So’m I,” Jason pointed out. “So’s your dad. And no, I didn’t think—” _hope_ “—it was Roy. I was eliminating a possibility.”

“Why would he even be on the table?” Cissie asked.

Jason paused. He didn’t like sharing information, as a rule. He’d like to be able to blame it on Bruce, but the truth was, he’d come to Wayne Manor with that habit fully formed. The less people knew about you on the street, where privacy was at a premium, the safer you were. And it wasn’t like anyone here was going to like what he was about to say.

But the fact that Lian’s kidnapper had also attacked Cissie was the best lead they had. Jason owed it to Roy not to waste it.

“The person I just texted was Cheshire. The assassin,” he said.

“What the fuck,” Tim said flatly.

“She came to me for help earlier tonight. Apparently right before Roy—” _say it_ “—died, the two of them, uh.” It shouldn’t be easier to say that Roy died than that he’d slept with Cheshire. Again. Still, Jason’s mouth couldn’t form the words. Instead, he looked at Cissie. “Well, apparently you’re an aunt. Mazel tov.”

She stared at him. “Roy had a _kid_ with an _assassin?_ He would _never_ —wait, no, what am I talking about, he was raised by my father. Of course he would.”

“That’s, uh. That’s certainly...something,” said Tim, who was still recuperating from the fact that Damian’s existence proved that Bruce had had sex at least one time. “I’m assuming that it’s relevant and also that I’m not going to like _why_ it’s relevant.”

Jason sighed. “Three nights ago Roy and Jade’s three-month-old daughter was kidnapped by our new friend with the pointy sticks.”

“Says the _assassin_ ,” Tim pointed out. “How do we know she’s not in league with whoever this guy is?”

“Why would she have him attack Cissie?” Jason replied.

“Back up,” Cissie said. “Why did Cheshire go to _you?_ I mean, no offense, I’m sure you’re great—”

“He’s not,” Tim said.

“—but if this is true, if Roy really does have a daughter, then Cheshire should have come to _us_ for help. We’re his family.”

Jason knew the sudden surge of anger he felt at her words was not rational, but it didn’t stop the white heat of it from threatening to overwhelm him. No one had wanted Roy when he was alive, and now that he was dead, it was like people wouldn’t stop chipping pieces off the meager bit of him that was left to Jason. First Jade, now this dainty little homecoming queen here, who hadn’t even _known_ Roy as long as Jason had, who never done a three-day stakeout with him or stitched up his wounds, who probably didn’t even know the way his smile looked at dawn when patrol was ending and the world was bathed in pink and gold…

Jason hadn’t been with Roy when he died. He hadn’t been able to avenge him. But he’d be _damned_ if anyone, let alone someone related to Oliver fucking Queen, took away his right to bring Roy’s daughter home safe.

“Yeah, because Green Arrow’s got such a great track record with babies,” he said. “How old were you when he found out about you? How old was your brother?”

Cissie’s jaw dropped, but Tim stepped between them before she could reply. “Okay, this isn’t helpful, so we’re all going to stop being _assholes_ —” he glared at Jason “—and start thinking of how—”

The Batcomputer suddenly blared out an alert, making them jump. “What, is it B?” Jason asked as Tim pushed him aside and pulled up the alert on the screen.

“No. This is one of my alarms. I synched the Titans security systems to the network here when I was on the team, and shockingly, Damian hasn’t changed anything,” Tim said. “Someone just broke into the old Titans hangar in New York. And stole a T-Jet.”

Cissie frowned. “Hasn’t the New York Tower been out of commission for years?”

“The archer,” Cass suggested.

They exchanged glances. “If he knows about Lian, and he knows about Cissie, he could know how to override the Titans security codes too,” Jason said. “I mean, I’ve done it. It’s not that hard.”

“Yes, let’s reminisce about when you were still trying to kill me, that was a fun time for all of us,” Tim said, rolling his eyes. “But the timing checks out. He could’ve been in New York half an hour ago, it’s not that far.”

“Can you see where he’s heading?” Cissie asked.

Tim typed something in. “Flight manifesto says San Francisco. So probably Titans Tower West, but why would he be going there?”

Cissie’s eyes went wide. “Emiko.”

Shit. If Damian was at Titans Tower, it was a safe bet that Emiko—what was her code name? Red Arrow?—was there too.

Jason stuffed the bloody shirt back in its bag and grabbed his mask and helmet. “Tim, warn the gremlin, and tell B I’m taking one of the Batplanes.”

Cissie stood up from the chair she’d been resting in. “I’m coming with you.”

Jason raised an eyebrow at her. “Can you draw a bow with that shoulder?”

Her jaw clenched, but she didn’t say anything. Cass, however, reached for her gear.

“Thought you were benched,” Jason said.

“Bringing Cheshire?” Cass asked.

“If I don’t want to find myself poisoned for going after her daughter’s kidnapper without her, yeah.”

“You need backup,” she said, and held up her non-injured hand. “Punch her with this.”

“Works for me,” Jason said. He glanced at Tim. “You good?”

Tim nodded. He didn’t look thrilled, but Jason knew he was doing the math, and they couldn’t all abandon Gotham to chase a single man. “Be careful.”

Jason put his mask on, followed by the helmet. “Never.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Canon: Roy and Jade did in fact hook up right before his death, in the 2016 Rebirth Titans series, and if DC doesn’t give me a Lian out of it I’ll riot. There is no canon confirmation that Cissie is Ollie’s daughter, but it was heavily implied twice in post-Crisis, and also I want it. GIVE ME NINE HUNDRED ARCHERS' DAUGHTERS, DC! GIVE THEM TO ME!!!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: This chapter contains suicidal thoughts and impulses.

Jason had to admit that it was a relief to have Cass along. They’d be arriving on the West Coast around dawn, with three hours’ extra sleep deprivation thanks to the time difference, but Cass could take the controls for half the flight and give Jason a break. He didn’t actually _sleep_ —he wasn’t stupid enough to trust Jade that far, even though he knew Cass could handle herself—but when he was twelve, Bruce had taught him how to go into a meditative trance that rested his body and mind while leaving him responsive to danger. It was the only reason he’d graduated middle school.

He flew the first shift, and Jade needled him through takeoff and all the way out of Gotham airspace. “How do you even know he’s going to San Francisco? He could have bullshitted the flight manifesto.”

“That’s a really good way to get into a midair collision,” he replied. “Just because you have your own plane doesn’t mean you don’t want to let air traffic control know where you are.”

“And Titans Tower?”

Jason shrugged, hands on the yoke. “Educated guess. He knows enough about the Titans to break into their old hangar and steal a T-Jet, and enough about the Arrows to come after Lian and Arrowette. Red Arrow’s a logical target.” He hadn’t told Jade that Cissie was Ollie’s daughter, or how Emiko was related—Jade was still an assassin, and there was no point in giving her leverage over any superheroes, related to Roy or not—but people had been assuming that Cissie was connected to Ollie long before she’d known he was her father. It wasn’t giving anything away to admit that the kidnapper seemed to be targeting archers and their relatives.

“ _Why?_ ” Jade demanded. “I mean, yes, obviously he’s going after the Arrows, but why? I loved Roy and all, but who the hell cares about Green Arrow? And why kidnap a baby the Arrows didn’t even know about?”

The word “loved” made Jason start. She said it casually, like Tim would say he loved photography, or Dick loved eating plain-ass peanuts from a sack like they were real food. Did that mean she’d just been fond of him, enough to fall into bed with him a time or three and be disappointed that he was gone? Or had she really, truly _loved_ him?

She didn’t deserve to. Her hands were bloody to the elbow. But Jason fell back on his Bat training and didn’t let his anger show on his face.

“No idea,” he said, in answer to her question.

“Then what the hell good are you as a detective, Batboy?” she asked. “You don’t even have a goddamn theory?”

“I barely have any _facts_ ,” Jason said. “It’s a mistake to theorize before one has data.”

“What, is that what the Bat taught you?”

“...Sherlock Holmes.”

Jade rolled her eyes and turned away. “Jesus Christ.”

When it was Cass’s turn to fly, Jason sat in the jump seat and let himself drift. The elements of the case floated across his mind—Lian, Cissie, the blood test, the T-Jet—and he turned them over one by one, moving the puzzle pieces around to try to get a sense of the whole picture. He hadn’t been lying when he told Jade it was a bad idea to force a theory, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t make use of enforced idleness to see if any connections announced themselves.

Roy’s daughter. Roy’s sister. Maybe Roy’s aunt, even if that had always seemed like a funny word for a girl nearly a decade younger than him. It all seemed to come back to Jason’s lost partner, but that didn’t make any _sense_. Roy had been gone for over a year—why would someone start picking off his family members now? Why would someone start picking off his family members _ever?_ Roy had always been better at making friends than enemies, and besides, he wasn’t here to hurt anymore.

The more logical answer was that it all came back to _Green Arrow_ , even if Lian remained a bit of an outlier. That guy made enemies every time he opened his mouth.

Maybe it just felt like everything came back to Roy because for the past year, everything _had_ , at least for Jason. The stupidest, most everyday things reminded him of Roy, like the smell of cheap coffee brewed too strong, or patching up his own wounds after a fight and remembering another pair of strong, sure hands doing it for him. Streets he’d never walked down with Roy echoed with his friend’s footsteps.

Just the other day, he’d been coming home with a bare bones supply of groceries he already knew would taste like nothing, when the feeling had struck him that Roy was just around the corner. He couldn’t have said why, in that moment—he just knew in his gut that when he turned the corner, Roy would be standing there, laughing at the great joke they’d played on everyone. That Wally would ever have hurt him. That he’d _leave_ Jason, just like that.

He’d hurried to the end of the street, palms sweating against the plastic straps of his grocery bags. But the only people there were a couple of old men playing dominoes and some kids drawing with chalk on the sidewalk.

And a busker, strumming out Simon and Garfunkel on an acoustic guitar.

The memory clogged his throat, and the groceries nearly slipped from his fingers. Roy had been in Star for a few days and so Jason had taken a solo run to L.A., chasing down a lead on some assault weapons souped up with Thanagarian tech. He’d stumbled back to his local safe house alone near dawn, bone-tired, and woken to the warm sun of late afternoon stretching across the sheets and the sound of music coming from the other room.

Normally hearing someone else in his safe house who wasn’t supposed to be there would have had him reaching for his guns, but he couldn’t imagine a would-be killer sitting down to play a little guitar first, and besides, he knew that voice. Jason pulled on sweatpants and opened the bedroom door.

“...When evening falls so hard, I will comfort you…”

Roy was sitting on the beat-up old couch in jeans and a Gotham Knights T-shirt he’d apparently stolen from Jason, curled around the gleaming curves of an acoustic guitar. He was growing his hair out again and it hung into his eyes, the California sun setting it ablaze as his fingers skimmed over the frets. He’d always had a surprisingly good voice, a warm tenor that fit the soft notes of the song like a favorite jacket. Jason leaned against the doorframe, content to listen.

“I’ll take your part when darkness comes and pain is all around...like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down...”

He’d known Jason was there just as Jason had known someone was in his safe house before he opened his eyes. In their line of work, a lack of awareness of your surroundings was deadly. But he finished the chorus before shaking his hair out of his eyes and looking up to smile at Jason.

“Morning, Jaybird,” he said. “Didn’t mean to wake you. Ollie and I were going through the storage unit and found his old guitar, so I liberated it.”

“You’re supposed to be in Star City another two days,” Jason said, but he couldn’t fight the way his lips were curving.

Roy shrugged. “I was craving a breakfast burrito and they make ‘em better here.” He nodded towards the brown paper sack sitting on top of the packing crate that served as a coffee table. “Yours is in there. Extra pepperjack.”

Jason peeled himself out of the doorframe, saw Roy’s gaze skitter away from his bare torso and back to the guitar. There was a cup of coffee in the paper bag too, dark and sweet. He tucked himself into the corner of the couch, his back against the arm of it and his feet on the cushion so that he could face Roy, and peeled back the plastic tab that kept his coffee lid sealed.

“Storage unit, huh?” he asked. “Find anything good?”

Roy picked out a few idle chords. “Just a lot of memories,” he said, then suddenly laughed. “I’ll tell you one thing, we were sure as shit committed to a theme back in the day. I’d forgotten how many things we put the word ‘arrow’ in front of.”

“Your Arrow-lips to my Bat-ears.”

Roy laughed again and went back to playing, something mellow and sad Jason remembered hearing on the oldies station but didn’t know the name of. Jason just listened, unwrapping his burrito after a minute to find it still hot, the cheese melted and oozing. He didn’t know if Roy was here because he’d been worried about Jason alone, or because he’d needed to put some distance between himself and a Speedy-shaped ghost, but either way Jason wasn’t complaining.

But that day in the Narrows, it hadn’t been Roy around the corner. Just a stranger with a guitar, and a song everyone knew, even if that afternoon it had felt like it was just theirs. Roy would never wake him by singing again; would never bring him coffee; would never smile at Jason like he was a sight worth seeing, even sleepy and bruised.

He hadn’t deserved it any more than Jade had. His hands were just as bloody as hers.

But he missed it, just the same.

*

Damian met them outside of Titans Tower, Red Arrow—Emiko—beside him. Damian had his arms crossed over his puffed-out little chest, and Jason had to bite back a grin. Most of the time the kid looked like a tiny Talia, but when he got imperious he was all Bruce.

“She,” Damian said, pointing a finger at Jade, “is not allowed in here.”

“Extenuating circumstances, demon brat,” Jason said as Jade rolled her eyes.

“Maybe security was lax during the forty-five seconds you were a Titan, Hood, but Rogues are not permitted in _my_ team’s headquarters,” Damian said. “Or have you also invited Deathstroke and the Fearsome Five for your little tea party?”

“You heard from Red Robin?” Jason asked.

Damian sniffed. “Yes,” he said. “Apparently a new player is targeting archers. Or their bastards, at least.”

“Watch your mouth,” Jade snapped.

“I’m no more legitimate than Harper’s by-blow. Don’t take it personally,” Damian said. “Regardless, _my_ teammates are made of a bit sterner stuff than Red Robin’s. But then, he always did have lax standards.” He was being snottier than usual, which meant he was rattled by the news that his friend might be in danger. Aw. The little brat cared.

Emiko elbowed him. “That’s my niece you’re talking about, jerk,” she said. “And Arrowette isn’t easy to take down, which means whoever this guy is, it’s good to have the heads up.” She cracked her knuckles. “I’m not easy to take down either.”

“So as you see, we don’t need your protection, and we don’t need to open the Tower to an assassin,” Damian said.

“ _We’re_ assassins,” Emiko pointed out.

“We’re _former_ assassins,” Damian insisted. “So you can take your companion elsewhere, Hood. Orphan, you can come in if you want.”

Jason sighed. “You don’t have to be this defensive about it. We’re not actually here to protect you.”

“Frankly, I couldn’t care less if our mystery archer uses you both as pincushions,” Jade agreed, and smiled her namesake smile at Emiko. “But you make excellent bait, child.”

It was Jason’s turn to roll his eyes. “Don’t make me play good cop, I’m very bad at it,” he told her. “Look, demon brat, we can stand out here all day and wait for the archer to attack us, or we can go into the Tower and sit the fuck down. I promise not to let Cheshire near any food preparation areas, and Orphan can watch her if she has to go to the bathroom—”

“No,” Cass and Jade said in unison.

“—but if _I_ was gonna make a move on your girl, I wouldn’t do it out here where there’s no damn cover, so standing around like this is a waste of all of our time.”

“He has my daughter,” Jade added. “Every second we waste when we could be getting her back is a toll _someone_ will be paying in blood. Don’t make it your team.”

Damian’s lip curled—he didn’t respond well to threats—but Emiko spoke first. “Fine,” she said.

“What?” Damian snapped.

“That’s my...great-niece, I guess, in danger,” Emiko said. “If letting Cheshire into the Tower brings her home faster, fine.” She glared at Jade. “But screw with me and I’ll put an arrow between your eyes.”

And so they were let into the Tower, although Damian insisted they stick to the main meeting room. The rest of the current team had already scattered, apparently, which was probably good—less potential collateral damage, and besides, they’d still be five against one when the archer attacked. He was good, but no one was _that_ good.

“Do you really think this guy can get past the Tower’s security system?” Emiko asked as they sat.

Jason shrugged. “He got past the one on the T-Jet, and Cyborg set that up. But if not, we’ll go down to the pier, have you stand around looking vulnerable.” He didn’t think it would take that long. Tim had texted to say the T-Jet had landed in an airfield outside of the city half an hour ago. The archer must be close by.

“Footage,” Cass suggested.

“Oh yeah, good call,” Jason said. He’d already had Tim text him the footage of the archer so he could study it; now he sent it to Damian. “Can you put this up on the big screen? Arrowette’s been out of the game a while, but maybe Red Arrow will recognize him.”

Damian put on a long-suffering expression, of course, but he pulled up the footage. Emiko watched it with a thoughtful expression, and Jason caught himself studying her for a likeness to Roy, and then mentally kicked himself. They weren’t biologically related any more than Roy and Cissie had been, nor had they been raised by the same people; it would be like him sharing expressions with the demon brat.

“I don’t know...” Emiko said, a little hesitantly. “There’s something about him that’s familiar. My first guess would be Merlyn, but I don’t think it’s him.”

“It’s not,” Damian said.

“That’s what Cass said,” Jason said. “How do you know?”

“He trained me too.” Damian shrugged. “League of Assassins. Even _she_ trained me in poisons for a time.” He nodded towards Jade.

“Yes, and you were just as intolerable at seven as you are now,” Jade snapped.

Jason ignored them and focused on Emiko. “Arrowette said something about your father. Komodo. Could it be him?”

“ _Robert Queen_ was my father,” Emiko said, apparently deciding to dispense with the secret identity for the moment. Fair enough. If Jade knew Roy’s secret, it wasn’t a big leap to Ollie and then the rest of the brood. “Simon LaCroix was just the man who raised me. And he’s dead. I killed him myself.”

She lifted her chin, as if daring any of them to judge her for it. Jade just shrugged. “I _tried_ to kill my father,” she said.

“I tried to kill _his_ father,” Jason said, pointing to Damian.

“My father...tried to kill me,” Cass said carefully. “Dead now.”

Emiko’s defiant stance relaxed a little. “Right,” she said. “Guess it’s universal. Dads suck.”

“Roy wouldn’t have,” Jason said before he knew he was going to speak.

Jade looked away. Emiko gave Jason a startled look, and then the faintest beginnings of a sad smile.

“No,” she agreed. “Roy wouldn’t have.”

Something prickled at the back of Jason’s throat. He opened his mouth to say something, anything that would make her stop giving him that sympathetic look, make him stop thinking about Roy holding the tiny girl on Jade’s phone in those broad archer’s arms of his—

“Down!” Cass said suddenly, tackling Emiko to the floor.

 _Shunk!_ An arrow embedded itself in the table where Emiko had been standing.

“He’s here!” Jason said unnecessarily, grabbing his helmet and shoving it back on.

“Everyone, fall in around Red Arrow!” Damian commanded.

“Give me room to fire, though!” Emiko protested. She was already on her knees to make a smaller target, an arrow to the string, Cass at her back. The rest of them backed up, foursquare around her.

“Where the fuck is he?” Jason demanded. Based on the trajectory of the arrow that had almost hit Emiko, he should be in the doorway they’d entered through, but there was no one there.

 _Shunk!_ Another arrow from—the ceiling? It hit the floor and started spewing smoke.

“This fucker’s got trick arrows?” Jason demanded, backing in closer to Emiko. His helmet would filter the smoke, and he knew Damian and Cass carried filtration masks, but he could hear Jade and Emiko coughing. Roy had never worn much protective gear, either—the reckless optimism of a ranged weapon fighter.

There was a grinding noise above them. Jason didn’t think, just grabbed Emiko and rolled. A ceiling tile hit the floor where they’d been, shattering. The archer dropped down after it, light as a cat and hard to see in the smoke clogging the room.

Jason leveled his guns. “I _will_ shoot you, motherfucker.”

The archer loosed his arrow—and apparently _he_ didn’t have any trouble seeing, because it went straight down the barrel of Jason’s gun, snapping his right wrist back so painfully he dropped the weapon. Not that it was any good with an arrow jammed up its business end.

“The fuck kind of cartoon bullshit was that?” Jason demanded, switching to a two-handed grip on his remaining pistol. The archer had already nocked another arrow. If he was that good and that fast, why had he shot Jason’s gun and not Jason?

A green blur zipped between them—Jade, lunging at the archer, claws outstretched. “What did you do with my daughter?”

The archer rolled, out of range of the poison tips of her nails, and fired before he’d completed the movement. The arrow pierced the hood of Jade’s sweatshirt and plunged into the floor, pinning and nearly strangling her. “Fuck!”

“Take him!” Damian shouted, leaping down from the table.

The archer caught him across the midsection with the bow, flinging him into the wall with a painful-sounding _thunk_ , then spun away from Cass’s kick. She pressed her advantage, backing him towards the others, tagging him with a couple of glancing hits. Thank fuck—whoever this guy was, even he couldn’t beat Cass.

Until he got another arrow out of his quiver. Cass reached for it, to stop him from putting it to the string—and a blue pulse of electricity crackled out of it, dropping her to the floor in a crumpled heap.

“Orphan!” Jason shouted. His finger tightened on the trigger, but he hesitated. It wasn’t Roy, but he hesitated.

Emiko didn’t. “Bastard,” she spat, and loosed an arrow towards the archer’s shoulder.

The archer shot it out of the air.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Jason said, and then a second arrow winged down the barrel of his remaining gun. Smoke started spewing from it, white instead of gray this time, and Jason hastily dropped it before it exploded.

It didn’t explode—but Jade, who’d managed to wriggle out of her hoodie, suddenly wobbled on her feet. “Gas,” she said, and toppled. Behind him, Jason heard Emiko hit the ground.

And just like that, Jason was the only one left standing. Unarmed, backed up against the meeting table, with an arrow pointed at his heart. He was close enough to see the sharp metal point of it. No trick this time. Just death.

“Do it,” he said, staring at that hooded, masked visage. One faceless man staring another down. “Do it!”

At least he’d see Roy again.

There was a long, suspended moment. The broadhead didn’t waver. Jason’s allies didn’t stir.

Then the archer turned and ran from the room.

Jason was good at ignoring his own feelings. Too good to linger on why the one he felt the most in that moment was regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Canon: Bb!Jason quotes Sherlock Holmes as Robin so I choose to believe this lit nerd still loves the Great Detective a lot. Ollie's guitar is also canon; Roy canonically plays the drums, but who's to say he doesn't also play guitar? Not me, that's for darn sure!


	3. Chapter 3

The gas wasn’t lethal. Once Jason got the windows open, he was able to revive the others pretty easily. Damian had a light concussion, which he whined about incessantly, but Cass had just been stunned; Jade and Emiko talked like lifelong smokers for the next hour, but they were basically fine.

“He attacks archers, then leaves before striking the killing blow?” Damian said. “It makes no sense. I’ve often said your personality is off-putting, Hood, but not enough to make an assassin flee from you when you’re at his mercy.”

“I wasn’t exactly _at his mercy_ ,” Jason protested. He hadn’t told them what he’d said to the archer. They wouldn’t understand.

Well. Cass might.

“We flew across the country for _nothing_ ,” Jade snarled. “We still have no idea who he is, and he didn’t take the T-Jet so we can’t track him. And he still has Lian.”

“We know he’s not working alone,” Jason said.

“What?”

“He can’t be.” It should have been obvious earlier. “Lian’s only three months old. If he’s keeping her alive—and he must be, you were right before,” he added hastily before he got a poison fingernail in the eye, “he can’t just stash her someplace and fly across the country. Someone is caring for her.”

“That’s not very useful when we don’t know _who_ ,” said Damian. Always helpful, that kid.

“We should talk to Ollie,” Emiko said. “Not about who’s watching Lian. But tell him about the archer, show him the footage. He might recognize the guy’s style.”

“Your family,” Cass agreed. “More targets.”

Jason chewed at the inside of his lip. They were both right. If they wanted to identify an archer, there was one man alive more qualified to do that than anyone else. And if Cissie and Emiko had been targets, the rest of the Arrows might be next.

Jason didn’t want to do it. If Roy’s ghost was loud in Gotham, how much louder would he be in the city where he was raised?

But the archer still had Lian.

“Yeah,” he said. “Looks like we’re headed to Star City.”

*

It was a quick flight to Star City in the Batplane. Emiko joined them, of course, and Damian insisted on tagging along. Jason wouldn’t say it out loud, but he was relieved—partially because having another Bat in the plane meant he and Cass could catnap properly without worrying that Jade would do something...Jade-like, and partially because Damian _did_ have a concussion and he _was_ only thirteen, and Jason felt better being able to keep an eye on him. If the kid keeled over, Dick would never let him hear the end of it.

Oliver Queen lived in a quaintly garish Victorian at the top of a ludicrously steep hill. It wasn’t the house Roy had grown up in, Jason knew.

“I was always jealous of Dick and Wayne Manor,” Roy had told him once. He’d been fixing the filters on Jason’s helmet, scarred and freckled fingers moving confidently over the delicate mechanism. “You guys had that big yard, bannisters to slide down, a dog. Ollie just had this sterile penthouse bachelor pad. I mean, he had six houses, but we lived in the penthouse.” He shrugged. “I know it sounds stupid—I was swinging on Arrowlines and fighting giant robots, I got plenty of thrills—but I really wanted to slide down a bannister.”

“Aren’t there like seven of you guys now, though?” Jason asked. A lock of Roy’s hair had fallen in front of his face, a dangling strand of sunset, and he kept trying to blow it out of his eyes, both hands occupied. Jason’s fingers itched to reach out and tuck it behind Roy’s ear. Just to be helpful. “I mean I know you don’t live there, but you were out there just last month. Seems like a lot for a penthouse.”

“Oh, we lost the penthouse ages ago when Ollie went broke. Lived in a lot of shitty little walk-ups until. Well.” His mouth twisted. _Until Ollie kicked me out_ , he didn’t say. “But he bought a house a couple years ago, in the old money part of town. I guess once the other kids started accumulating he thought it was worth it.”

They were in Chicago, eight hundred miles from Gotham, which was the only reason Jason didn’t take Roy to Wayne Manor to slide down the bannisters right then and there.

“Go back to the part about the giant robots,” he said, instead of _you were worth it, too_ , and Roy grinned up at him.

Now he stood glaring at this stupid house, the one that had never been Roy’s home, until Cass gave him a gentle nudge.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he said, and made himself walk up to the front door. Emiko was already unlocking it, Jade and Damian right behind her.

“Stand back,” she warned.

“Why?” Damian asked. “Are there booby traps?”

She smirked. “Something like that.”

She opened the door, and something enormous and furry and white came bounding out at top speed, nearly bowling Damian over and barking its head off.

“Hiya, George!” Emiko said, dropping to her knees and scratching behind its ears while it licked her face.

“Is that a wolf?” Jade asked, moving to stand behind Damian, who looked like all his birthdays had come at once.

“Of course not,” Jason said, then took another look. “Actually…”

“He’s part wolf,” Emiko confirmed as George bared massive fangs in a doggie grin. “But he’s a big sweetheart, aren’t you, George? You only rip people’s throats out when we tell you to, don’t you?”

Damian had already pulled off his glove and was now offering a hand to George, who sniffed it and then wagged his tail. “This dog is now an honorary Titan,” Damian said, patting him on the head.

“Yes, yes, this is all adorable. Can we go inside and show Queen the footage already?” Jade asked.

“Now, Emi, what did I say about bringing supervillains home?” a voice drawled. Jason looked up to see Oliver Queen standing in the doorway, arms folded. “The kid and the girl’re okay. The other two riffraff can vamoose.”

“ _Ol_ -lie,” Emiko said, rolling her eyes as she got to her knees. She pushed past him, pausing to let him throw an arm around her shoulders and smooch the top of her head. “Come on, everyone, he’s just talking because he likes the sound of his own voice.”

“It’s _a_ reason, but it’s not the _only_ reason,” Ollie protested, but he didn’t object when Jade and Jason filed into the house after Cass and Damian, the latter with his hand still on George’s collar. He did, however, stop Jason in the vestibule with a hand on his shoulder. “Todd.”

Jason stiffened. “Queen.”

God, he hated this man. He hated his self-righteousness, his hypocrisy, his conviction that being the loudest voice in the room meant that he was right. He hated his stupid beard.

Most of all, he hated the way Roy had seemed to grow smaller, sometimes, when he talked about Ollie. Like he was still seeing himself as a boy who had failed his father, when anyone with eyes could see that it was Ollie who had failed his son. Like there was something he was still trying to earn from the man, something that should have been given to him unconditionally.

He expected Ollie to start tearing into him for being a violent waste of potential—true—or not having been the friend he should have been to Roy—also true—but Ollie just gave his shoulder a light squeeze and let go. “I’m told you’re the reason my daughter came home safely,” he said. “Thank you.”

For a minute the age difference between Ollie and Emiko threw Jason off, and then he remembered that Emiko was Ollie’s _sister_. Ollie was talking about Cissie. The fight in Gotham seemed like days ago. “Cissie’s here?”

“Tim put her on the redeye. She’s resting upstairs,” Ollie said.

Jason had never known what to do with gratitude. “I just happened to be closest,” he said, looking away.

Ollie, mercifully, let it go, and they filed into the living room. Emiko was talking to Roy’s brother Connor and another blonde teenage girl, presumably Roy’s other sister—Mia? Thea? Something like that. Damian was sitting on the floor with George in his lap, practically hidden behind the massive dog, and Cass and Jade were both standing—Cass looking perfectly at ease, Jade like she was ready to start shaking people until her daughter fell out.

Before anyone could speak, Dinah came down the stairs and joined them. “Cissie says the painkillers are helping,” she reported. “Hi, Emi. Hello, various Bats. Hello, woman who once poisoned me for fun.”

Jade shrugged. “You lived, didn’t you?”

Dinah’s smile was all fang. “Give me an excuse, Cheshire. You’ll see just how lively I am.”

“As much as I would dearly love to see that match, I’m assuming there’s a reason so many Bats are out of the belfry,” Ollie said. “Cissie said she was attacked by a masked archer?”

Emiko raised her hand. “Not just Cissie.”

Jason filled everyone in as quickly as he could, given how convoluted the story had become. “...So we wanted to show you the footage of the archer, see if you recognized him. Or knew who he might be by reputation,” he concluded.

Ollie’s glance slid to Emiko. “How good is he?”

Her mouth twisted. “Better than me. He might be better than you.”

“Shit.” Ollie held out his hand. “Show me.”

Jason pulled up the video and handed Ollie his phone, and Ollie watched it in silence, tugging at his beard.

“Shit,” Ollie said again. He handed the phone to Dinah so she could see.

“You know who it is?” Jason asked as Dinah watched the video and then passed the phone to Connor.

Ollie shook his head. “I just don’t see how it could be a newcomer. The archery world isn’t a very big one, believe it or not. I thought I knew all the players, especially at this level.”

“Emiko said he’s better than you. Is he?”

“She said he _might_ be,” Ollie corrected. He hesitated, then added, “She could be right.”

“Who’s better than you, then?” Jason asked, folding his arms.

“Shado,” Ollie said immediately. “Malcolm Merlyn used to be. Could be he upped his game.”

“That’s not Merlyn. I would know,” Damian interjected from behind George, and Cass nodded.

“He’s not big on masks,” Ollie agreed. “Likes the whole world to know what he’s up to.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s Komodo, but he’s dead. And there was Roy.”

Jason looked sharply at him. “What do you mean?”

Ollie shrugged. “He was almost as good as me. Maybe better. I don’t know, we never exactly tested it. But any target I could hit, I always knew he could hit. And the other stuff?” He pointed to the phone. “I can’t flip like that. Roy could. That’s your big brother’s fault. He could freerun like a Bat, fight like Dinah, build a trick arrow out of paper clip and spit…” He looked away. “I might have been the better shot. _Maybe._ But Roy was the better superhero.”

“But you never told him that, did you?” Jason asked, the poisonous tone seeping out of him before he knew he was going to speak. “Nah, you liked him better as the failed kid sidekick. Couldn’t let him be _competition_.”

“You watch your fucking mouth,” Ollie snapped. “No, I wasn’t always the father Roy deserved. No one knows that better than me. If he was better than me that was entirely his doing, and I was damn proud of him for it.”

“Sure you were,” Jason said, rolling his eyes.

“Get off your goddamn high horse, Hood,” Ollie said. “It wasn’t _me_ treating him like a sidekick two years ago.”

Jason saw red. “He was my _partner!_ ”

“He was your punching bag, and he was too nice a guy to know you didn’t deserve him!”

“Yeah? Well, who’d he learn that from?”

Jason didn’t realize he was moving towards Ollie, fists clenched, until Cass and Dinah were suddenly between them. “This isn’t _helping_ ,” Dinah snapped.

“Roy would want you helping to find his daughter, not rehashing ancient history,” Connor agreed from the couch.

“At least one of you assholes remembers there’s a child in danger here,” Jade said. “Some superheroes. The League never fought like this.”

“Grandfather would have had them killed for it,” Damian agreed.

Jade turned to Ollie. “It’s not Roy. He’s gone. You and the boyfriend and I can argue over which of us he was too good for later, but that doesn’t change the facts.” She spoke crisply, but Jason caught the waver in her voice. “It’s not any of the other people you mentioned. So _who the fuck is it?_ ”

“Ollie…” Dinah said. “What about Tommy?”

Ollie tugged at his beard again. “Shit, yeah. It could be Tommy. I didn’t think he was that good, but I only saw him in action once, and that was years ago.”

“Who the fuck is Tommy?” Jason demanded.

Ollie sighed and sank down against the arm of the couch. “Tommy Merlyn was...is...Malcolm Merlyn’s son. Malcolm was close friends with my parents when I was growing up, and Tommy was my best friend. Their relationship was...not the best. Possibly because Malcolm was already a League of Assassins member. Not to mention sleeping with my mother.” His smile barely qualified as such, it was so bitter. “My parents were...well, they kept a lot of secrets. Anyway, during my idiot playboy days, I thought it would be a good idea to throw a party on an oil rig my family owned. There were...terrorists, and an explosion, and I thought Tommy was killed, until I found out he was working as an assassin years later. He’s an archer, and he wears a black suit and mask.”

Jason frowned. “So let me get this straight. The options for ‘evil archers’ are: your dad’s mistress, his two best golfing buddies, and the son of one of them? Did everyone who met your dad eventually decide to pick up a bow and murder people?”

“Feels like that sometimes.” Ollie scrubbed a hand over his face, a gesture so like one of Roy’s that it hurt to look at it. “Tommy probably resents me. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. But I wouldn’t have thought he’d go after _kids_. And how would he even know about the baby?”

“League connections?” Dinah suggested. “If his father is League, maybe he is too. And if they were watching Cheshire…”

“No. I was trained by Malcolm Merlyn, and I’ve never heard of his son,” Damian said. “But it _would_ explain why Todd couldn’t find his blood listed in any of the databases, if he’s a relative unknown.”

“I say we go kill him, and if it turns out it wasn’t him, we keep looking,” Jade suggested. “Where do we find your old BFF, Queen?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Ollie asked. “I’m not even sure he’s still _alive_.”

“Then what use are you?” she demanded, and turned to Jason. “Why the hell are we here, Hood? He doesn’t know who it is, he doesn’t know how to find who it _might_ be, and meanwhile this asshole still has my daughter. You’re supposed to be a detective, and so far all you’ve done is get more kids shot at. When are you going to stop wasting my fucking time?”

“Hey, you came to _me_ ,” Jason said. “You want to try tracking him down on your own? You go right ahead.” He meant it, too—he’d keep looking, because Roy’s daughter deserved no less, but he’d be perfectly happy to do it without Jade.

Jade gave him a look of utter contempt, which was pretty rich for someone who poisoned people for money. “Because I thought you _cared_ about Roy. But despite throwing an absolute shitfit whenever anyone suggests that you might not have been the only person on the planet who loved Roy, you don’t seem to give a damn what happens to his child.”

“Not fair,” Cass said, which was good, because Jason was too choked with anger to speak.

“It’s a little fair,” Ollie said. “You Bats love to think you’ve got a monopoly on grief.”

“You don’t get to speak of my family that way, Queen,” Damian said.

“You don’t get to speak _to_ my family that way, Damian,” Emiko retorted.

Suddenly everyone was shouting at once, and Jason knew that if he didn’t get out of there right now he was going to take a swing at someone, and that wasn’t going to end well in a room with seven superheroes, one supervillain, one wolf, and whatever the hell Jason was. He turned and walked straight through the living room and into the kitchen, hoping that this house was built along logical lines and—

Yep. There was a door leading to the backyard. Jason slammed it open, digging his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket as he went. Let them judge him for leaving. Let them scream at each other all day. He didn’t need any of this shit.

He came to a halt in the middle of the backyard, which was wilder and more overgrown than anything Alfred would’ve allowed in his gardens, but bright with flowers. He shook a cigarette out of the half-crushed pack in his hand, but it took three tries to light it with his cheap, shitty lighter, the one Roy had always made fun of.

“You gotta buy a better lighter, Jaybird,” Roy used to say, digging his own out of his pocket and curving his hand around the flame to keep the wind from blowing it out while Jason still needed it. “You’re literally a millionaire. You could hire someone to follow you around and light your cigarettes for you.”

“That’s what I have you for,” Jason would say, and Roy would grin, that sharp flash of teeth that had lived somewhere under Jason’s ribs, that still lived there. “Anyway, this one’s mine.”

He hadn’t had to say anything else. Roy had understood that Jason had little enough to call his own that he held on fiercely to what there was, even if it was broken. Roy had always understood.

Jason exhaled, watching the smoke drift through the cool fall air, and wondered why shitheads like him and Ollie got to come back while Roy was still in his grave. Ollie had said Roy was better than him. He’d been better than Jason, too. It didn’t make any damn sense.

And then the archer was there.

Jason felt him before he turned around. It was a lifting of the hairs on the back of his neck, a change in the wind. He shifted to the left and found him, standing inhumanly still, incongruous in his mask and hood amidst Dinah’s heirloom rosebushes.

The archer had an arrow on the string, leveled at Jason’s heart as always. But Jason was so tired.

“Couldn’t this wait until I finished smoking?” he asked, waving the cigarette at the archer.

The archer didn’t say anything.

“Which of them is it this time?” Jason asked. “Connor? The girl? Or are you finally going for the big guy himself?”

The archer didn’t say anything.

“She’s my best friend’s kid, you know,” Jason said. “I mean, taking a baby is a dick move under any circumstances, but…” He shook his head. “He was a great guy. Hell, you’d probably have liked him, you’ve got such a hard-on for archers. That little girl’s going to grow up to be something amazing, and I can’t let you get in the way of that. You get that, right?”

The archer adjusted his grip on the bow. It was the first time Jason had ever seen him look uncertain. But he still didn’t speak.

“Yeah, I know. Hang on.” Jason took one last drag, then bent to stub the cigarette out against the sole of his shoe before dropping it into the grass. Despite everything, he still got a perverse pleasure out of littering in Oliver Queen’s yard.

“Okay, Tommy or whoever the fuck you are,” he said, straightening up. “Let’s go.”

And then he charged the archer, bellowing at the top of his lungs as he did: _“He’s here! In the backyard!”_

The archer stepped back and fired. Jason flung himself to the right, barely getting out of the way in time. He didn’t draw his guns. This wasn’t Gotham, where everyone knew to keep their heads down in dicey situations; here, gunshots would bring curious neighbors into the line of fire, and cops into a situation that was way over their heads. Besides, they needed the archer alive.

He did, however, palm his knife as he ducked under the archer’s reach, bringing himself in too close to shoot at. The archer clocked him in the head with his bow, but the quarters were too tight and he couldn’t get a good swing; it hurt, but didn’t disorient. Not enough to stop Jason from slicing his blade across the shoulder strap of the archer’s quiver.

The archer hit his wrist with the bow and that _did_ disable, Jason’s fingers going numb. The knife dropped, but so did the quiver, and that was good enough. Those trick arrows were plenty dangerous even if Jason was too close for the archer to fire them.

He grabbed two fistfulls of the archer’s black shirt and tried to throw him over his hip. The archer countered, hitting the ground lightly and rolling out of Jason’s reach, but that was fine. Jason had just been trying to separate him from the quiver.

“What are you waiting for?” he yelled, finally glancing back at the house. As he’d expected, all of the Arrows were on the porch—except for Cissie, who was poked out of an upstairs window—and they all had arrows on the string. Dinah, Cass, Damian, and Cheshire were there too, but none of them had weapons with any kind of range. “Shoot him!”

Before any of them could, the archer charged him. They hit the ground hard enough to drive the air out of Jason’s lungs, but he fought like a wildcat, kicking up divots of lawn as they rolled over and over. The archer was fast, and he was strong, and Jason knew he was on his own, because even the best shot in the world wouldn’t be able to fire when it would be so easy to hit Jason by accident.

His only advantage was that the archer hadn’t let go of his bow, which at first Jason thought was an idiotic move until he realized the archer was trying to get it around Jason’s neck. He could choke him out with the bow or garrote him with the string; either way it didn’t sound like a good time.

Time to stop fighting fair, not that Jason ever did. He went for the groin with a knee and the face with a hand outstretched like a claw.

His knee missed. His hand snagged the mask and pulled it free.

It wasn’t Tommy Merlyn.

It couldn’t be Tommy Merlyn, because Jason had never met Tommy Merlyn, had never even heard about him until half an hour ago, and he _knew_ this face, knew it like the beat of his own heart. He knew those eyes, the soft blue of a June sky, and the long copper lashes that fringed them. He knew the faint pale nick of a scar high on the left cheekbone. He knew the pink lower lip, the dip in the center of it that had always seemed to be waiting for Jason’s thumb.

“Roy?” he said. He didn’t mean to whisper. It came out that way anyway.

He heard startled voices behind him, but he couldn’t turn, couldn’t tear his gaze away from the face he thought he’d never see again. “Roy,” he said again, and it was closer to a real sound this time. “What are you doing?”

There was no explanation in those eyes, no guilt or shame. There was nothing there at all.

Something clicked, loud in the shocked stillness of the backyard. Jason looked down to see Roy holding something in his hand: a trick arrowhead, with a thin white stream of smoke issuing from it.

Gas. Again. And Jason wasn’t wearing his helmet this time.

“Roy, what are you…” he tried, even as his vision went blurry, as the face he’d been looking for for a year slipped away from him again. “Don’t…”

His hands—when had his hands started clutching at Roy? They were numb now, the black clothing slipping from his fingers as Roy pulled away. Jason couldn’t stop him.

“Shoot him, you stupid old man!” Jade screamed as Roy ran out of the backyard, out of his reach, out of his life.

“What are you, nuts? That’s _Roy!_ ” Ollie’s voice.

“He has my child!”

There was the sound of a scuffle, and the _twang_ of a bowstring. The arrow went wide. Jade was no archer.

No archer.

Jason’s hands were empty, and everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Canon: Technically Rebirth established that “Star City” is just a nickname for Seattle, but that’s stupid so I’m ignoring it, and placing Star City somewhere vaguely in the Pacific Northwest as per usual. George was introduced in New 52 and forgotten in Rebirth but I WANT HIM BACK. Mia was also very briefly introduced in New 52 with a new origin but I’m ignoring that and giving you post-Crisis Connor and Mia, New 52/Rebirth Emiko, and post-Crisis/Rebirth Cissie. YOU’RE WELCOME.
> 
> Jade did in fact once poison Dinah, in the first post-Crisis Birds of Prey run by Gail Simone. (I am ignoring the fact that it was partially because Jade was jealous of Dinah’s closeness to Lian because that wouldn’t make sense here.)
> 
> Tommy appears in only about 3 issues total, all New 52, and Ollie gives a pretty thorough summary of them here; Malcolm’s affair with Moira Queen is detailed in Rebirth. Shado’s affair with _Robert_ Queen is in New 52. Ollie’s parents suck. And yes, the two main evil archers in canon are Ollie’s dad’s two best friends (Komodo and Merlyn). This is what happens when you suck, Robert!!!
> 
> hi i really like green arrow


	4. Chapter 4

Half an hour later, Jason was slumped on Oliver Queen’s couch, clutching to a cup of strong black coffee like it would put the world back together again. His head throbbed, but he’d only enough gas to put him under for a moment, out in the open air like that.

“A clone,” Damian suggested.

“An evil twin,” Emiko said.

“A clone of an evil twin,” Cissie offered, propped up on the other end of the couch with her arm still in a sling.

“A robot,” said the other blonde girl, whose name had turned out to be Mia.

“A shapeshifter,” said Dinah, with a worried look at Ollie, who was going through the quiver Roy had abandoned in the backyard in case there was some useful evidence in it.

They argued more and more loudly, until Jason’s head ached worse than before, until he couldn’t stop himself from kicking the coffee table in front of him and shouting, “Shut up! It’s Roy, okay? It’s really him!”

He didn’t bother to watch the concerned glances that he knew were being exchanged. “Jason…” Dinah said.

“None of you were as close to him as I was,” Jason said. “You couldn’t _see_.”

Jade tried. “We all got a perfectly good look—”

“Three years ago, Roy and I were in Prague, tracking down these scumbags who...whatever, it doesn’t matter. The point is, we got thrown through the window of a coffeehouse. There was a lot of glass. I had my helmet on, but Roy got cut. Right here.” He drew a finger of his free hand across his cheekbone, tracing the line he knew by heart. “He still has the scar. Cloning doesn’t copy scars. A twin, a fucking _shapeshifter_...no.” He shook his head. “It’s him.”

“He’s dead,” Ollie said, putting down the arrows he was sorting. He looked haunted. “I saw his body. I _buried_ his body.”

“ _You’re_ dead,” Jason pointed out. “I’m dead. The kid’s dead.” He jerked a thumb at Damian, who rolled his eyes but nodded. “Hell, it was the first thing I thought when Bruce told me Roy was gone. He’d come back.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I just didn’t think he’d come back like this.”

“Kid…”

“We knew, didn’t we?” Jason said, interrupting him. “The way he moved, the way he shot...I pulled my punches every time, because I knew who he was under there.” He looked at Cass. “You saw him fight. You recognized him.”

Cass’s expression was apologetic. “I did. Didn’t...understand. Thought I was wrong.”

Jason’s gaze slid back to Ollie. “ _You_ knew.”

“I told you. There’s not a lot of people who can shoot like that. I didn’t expect a miracle.” Ollie sighed. “Doesn’t mean I wasn’t hoping for one.” He tugged on his beard again, what Jason was learning to read as a troubled gesture. “Look, I probably have enough pull to get Roy—or his coffin, at least—exhumed, see if the body is gone…”

“We don’t have _time!_ ” Jade snapped. “If Hood here spent enough time memorizing Roy’s scars to say for sure that it’s him, fine. Good enough for me. We can worry about why and how later. I want to know where the _fuck_ my daughter is!”

“If we knew how he came back and why he’s like this, it might tell us where he is,” Connor pointed out gently.

“Well, how did _you_ come back?” she demanded, looking at Ollie.

“My best friend was the spirit of vengeance at the time and did me a solid,” Ollie said. “I don’t know who the human host of the Spectre is right now but I’m pretty sure Roy’s not particularly friendly with him.”

“My father used an Apokoliptian crystal to activate the Omega Sanction energy my corpse had unintentionally been infused with,” Damian volunteered. “I doubt that’s relevant here.”

“I’m confused,” Cissie put in. “Why are we even talking about Ollie or Damian? Isn’t it kind of obvious?” Everyone stared at her and she shrank back a little. “I mean...uh. It had to have been a Lazarus Pit. Tim told me that’s how _you_ came back, Jason, and you also came back kind of, um...supervillain-y.”

Jason raised his eyebrows at her.

“Well, you _did_ ,” she insisted defensively.

“The Lazarus Pits can’t bring people back to life,” Damian said.

Jason nodded. “I did get a dip in a Lazarus Pit, but it didn’t bring me back to life. I was already alive. I don’t know how, I just...woke up.” He tried to say it lightly, but he suspected that the memory of waking up in his coffin—the idea that _Roy_ had woken up like that—crept into his voice. “But I was sort of...huh.”

“What?” Jade asked.

“I don’t really remember…” Jason said slowly. “But Roy...there was nothing behind his eyes, just now. It was like there was no one in his body. I think, from what I’ve heard...I think I was like that.”

“You were,” Damian said. Jason frowned at him, confused. “I was still living with my mother at the time. I was about eight. I used to see how many weapons I could stack on top of you before you responded.” He shrugged. “I never found the limit.”

Jason had no memory of this whatsoever, but if his life hadn’t been going entirely to shit right now, he would have started planning revenge. As it was, he just blinked and moved on. “Right. Anyway, the Lazarus Pit didn’t bring me back to life. It just sort of...fixed what was broken.”

“So we could use it to fix Roy?” Mia said, just as Jason was realizing the implication of his own words.

Part of him rebelled at the thought. Hurl Roy into that sulfuric, stinking green water? Condemn him to a lifetime of nightmares, the madness always lurking on the fringes of his consciousness?

The rest of him just kept seeing Roy’s eyes, that soft blue dead and flat and unrecognizing. The rest of him would have pushed Roy in right then and there if it meant he got to hear his friend laugh again, even once.

“I’m not convinced the Pit hasn’t already been used in some capacity. Or at least League resources,” Damian said slowly, and Jason gave him a hard look. “Oh, come on, Todd. You know my grandfather has been studying immortality for centuries. Did you think he hadn’t explored other avenues besides the Pit? Researched alternatives in the event that his heart stopped beating?”

“You think Ra’s woke Roy up?” Jason asked, considering it. He and Jade had suspected League involvement from the start, after all.

“Frankly, I would have thought Harper was beneath his notice. I always got the impression you kept him around to make yourself look better,” Damian said, and Jason had to remind himself that Alfred would be annoyed if Jason shot him. “Oh, calm down. After today, I’m reconsidering. And Grandfather has always seen the utility of archers—Merlyn’s presence among the League proves that much, at least.”

Jason’s teeth clenched so hard his jaw ached. “Roy is not a _utility_.”

“Grandfather sees everyone as a utility, myself included,” Damian said. His eyes had the expression they got sometimes, too old for his years. “Don’t take it personally.”

“Speaking of Merlyn…” Ollie picked up one of the arrows he’d been sorting. “This arrowhead. See the barbs on it?” He pointed to the wickedly curved hooks along the broadhead. “This isn’t a trick arrow. It’s just nasty. I would never use something like this. _Roy_ would never use something like this.” His eyes flicked towards Jason. “Even palling around with _you_.”

“Listen, you fucking—” Jason said, starting to stand, but Cass pushed him gently back into his seat, and Dinah said “ _Oliver_ ” firmly enough that even Jason felt a little scolded.

“Well,” Ollie said, rolling his eyes, but that was fine—Jason hadn’t expected him to apologize. Jason never expected anyone to apologize. “The _point_ is, Merlyn uses these. Malcolm Merlyn, I mean. And he knows perfectly well how good Roy is.”

“And he works for Ra’s, and Ra’s has however many bottles of resurrection juice chilling in his fridge,” Jason concluded. “So, yeah. League resources.”

“Good enough for me,” Ollie said, standing up and glancing between Jason, Damian, and Jade. “I’m assuming one of you three stab-happy types can get us into League of Assassins headquarters?”

Jason’s eyebrows went up again. “ _You’re_ coming?”

“They have my kid.” Ollie’s face went serious, and for the first time Jason thought he understood why someone as goofy as Oliver Queen had survived a superhero career as long as he had. “I’m taking him back.”

*

It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. First, they had to decide who was going. The Batplane could only fit so many, for starters, and Ollie absolutely put his foot down when Cissie said she was coming despite her injury. A screaming match promptly ensued, which got louder when he said Mia and Emiko should stay behind, too. Jason distinctly heard the phrase “If you wanted me to do what you said, you should have tried parenting me for the first sixteen years of my life!” deployed. It wasn’t pretty.

“We don’t _know_ that Roy’s at League headquarters, and so far he’s only gone after me and Cissie,” Emiko pointed out. “What if he comes back while you’re all gone? How is that keeping us safer?”

“That’s why I want you and Mia here, since both of you have two working arms at the moment,” Ollie said with a pointed look at Cissie, who huffed and turned away.

Jason cleared his throat and nudged Cass. “If the injured are stopping here...maybe you should stay,” he suggested, quietly so as not to drag her into the raging Arrow argument. She raised an eyebrow at him. “I know it’s just a sprain. But how many League assassins do you want to fight with it? I’ve got Damian and Jade and Dinah, I’ll be fine.”

She sighed, and then lifted her chin. “I will stay,” she said, in what was for her a very loud voice. “If Roy returns. Four against one.”

Connor, who had stepped out when the shouting started, walked back in with his phone held out and on speaker. “I called Kyle and filled him in. He’s on his way. I think the girls should be pretty safe with a Green Lantern on their side.”

“Yeah, happy to help, but Con, are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Kyle asked over the speaker. “You know if Roy needs me I’m there, no question.”

Jason felt his lip curling. Kyle had always rubbed him the wrong way, but this felt like more than that, anger building like tension at the base of his skull.

“Thanks, Kyle, but if you could just keep an eye on the girls—who are all extremely capable and don’t need any help normally, but this is a _brainwashed assassin with a key to our house_ so we’re being extra careful,” Connor added unsubtly, and Mia snorted, “that would be great.”

“I don’t think we buried him with his keys,” Emiko muttered.

“I could call Hal, ask him to go with you,” Kyle suggested. “He’d do anything for Roy, you know that. Hell, I’ll call the League. The uh, Justice one, not the Assassins one.”

The tension in Jason’s neck tightened. “ _No_ ,” he snapped before he could stop himself, and received at least half a dozen curious looks. He didn’t quite understand his objection himself—he had no real opinion on Jordan, and a Green Lantern ring on their side was nothing to sneeze at. To say nothing of heavy hitters like Superman or Martian Manhunter.

“Todd’s right,” Damian said. “Ideally we infiltrate my grandfather’s stronghold, extract Harper, and bring him home for deprogramming. If we’re spotted, Queen or Nguyen can simply make the case that they’re retrieving what’s theirs, and we might be able to negotiate. But if we bring metas into the situation, my grandfather will view it as the opening salvo in a war, and respond accordingly.”

“I’m not a meta,” Kyle said. “But fine, understood.”

He kept talking—because of _course_ he did, Jason had been to fifty-two universes with the guy and he hadn’t shut up in a single one of them—but now Jason’s phone was ringing. He stepped away from the group and pulled it out of his pocket, then rolled his eyes once he saw the screen. This was the _last_ thing he needed right now.

“ _What_ , Dickie?” he asked once he’d answered.

“What do you mean, _what?_ ” Dick replied. He sounded slightly hysterical. “My best friend comes back from the dead as a murderous zombie and you don’t _tell_ me?”

The conversation in the living room was getting loud again, so Jason decided to take the liberty of heading upstairs so he could deal with Dick. “How did you even—” he started, and then remembered that Cissie had been deftly texting with one hand earlier. No prize for guessing to whom. “Tim called you.”

“Of course Tim called me! Why didn’t _you?_ ”

All the rooms on this floor seemed to be teenage girls’ bedrooms and Jason was man enough to admit to himself that he was terrified to enter any of them. He settled for the bathroom, closing the lid to the toilet so that he could sit on it and shutting the door, leaving it open a crack so that he could hear if there was another attack downstairs.

“We were in a hurry, and you were in Bludhaven,” he said. “There wasn’t time to wait for you.”

“You still should have told me,” Dick said. “This is _Roy_. He’s my best friend.”

That stupid phrase again. “Thought Wally was your best friend. You know, the guy who killed Roy?”

There was a pause. “Too far,” Dick said finally, in a voice that sounded like he was barely keeping it level.

Jason tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. What was he supposed to do, apologize? He hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true. And fine, sure, maybe Jason felt a bit bad about what Dick had lost, but it paled beside dealing with what _he’d_ lost.

“Look, you know now, okay?” Jason said, sidestepping the Wally issue entirely. “What do you want from me?”

“I want to _help_ ,” Dick said, like it was obvious. “Cissie said you’re heading for League of Assassins headquarters. Tim and I can make some calls, we’ll have you two dozen Titans minimum by the time you get there.”

“Tim’s Titans weren’t even on the team with Roy.”

“Doesn’t matter. He was a founder. Any Titan would go to the mat for him. You know that.” Dick’s voice softened. “You weren’t the only one who loved him, Jason.”

Jason’s throat clicked helplessly a few times before he could speak. “Yeah, well, Damian says it should be a stealth mission and I agree, so two dozen Titans aren’t really going to help with that.”

“Jay—”

“I’ll call you if we need you.” Jason hung up before Dick could say anything else, then dropped his phone with a clatter on the tile floor and buried his face in his hands.

Dick wanted to _help_. Kyle wanted to _help_. Hal and Ollie and every idiot teenager who’d ever pulled on spandex and called themselves a Titan for five fucking minutes, they were all so eager to help Roy— _now_ , when it was something they could understand, assassins and supervillains and resurrections.

But where had any of them been when Roy had _asked_ for help—a year ago, two years ago, _ten_ years ago? Maybe he hadn’t said he needed it with words, not to anyone but Jason, but Jason couldn’t be the only one who’d seen him testing himself by ordering alcohol he wouldn’t drink, seen him pushing at the edges of his sobriety to see how far it would stretch, heard him circling the drain of his own self-destructive thoughts.

And yet how many times had Roy wallpapered that bright, teasing grin over the holes and said he was fine? Jason had always known it was a lie, because it was the same one he told. But the others…

They’d let Roy continue to be the laughingstock. The addict. The horndog. The trick arrows guy. They’d ignored that Roy was bleeding out in front of him until the only place he could turn to for help was the place that eventually killed him.

And Jason had _told_ him to go there. Jason would have listened to anything Roy needed to say, would have spent a lifetime of sleepless nights being whatever Roy needed to put between himself and his pain. But he’d known he was bad for Roy and he’d thought Sanctuary would be better.

It wasn’t _fair_ , Jason thought, his jaw clenching until it ached. It wasn’t fair that someone as good, as _bright_ as Roy had had to choose between destruction at Sanctuary and destruction with Jason.

But fuck it, as bad for him as Jason had been, Roy had been _his_ , and now every superhero who’d glanced his way even once seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork to make their claim. Damian had said Ollie and Jade would claim what was theirs from Ra’s. But Roy was _Jason’s_ , and if Jason couldn’t claim him by virtue of being first, he should at least have the right to claim him by being the one who hurt the most.

He stood up, because he couldn’t sit anymore. Did Hal fucking Jordan feel like this when he heard that Roy was dead? Did Dick? Did any of those idealistic teenage girls downstairs who called him their brother but hadn’t even known him as long as Jason had?

And Roy wasn’t even _dead_ anymore, he was _back_ , so why did Jason _still feel like this?_

He snatched up a ceramic toothbrush organizer on the counter and nearly hurled it at the wall, needing to feel something break besides him, but caught himself just in time. If he started smashing things it would kick off another fight, and that would delay them getting to Roy.

He put the organizer back down and backed away from the counter, backed into the corner of the bathroom where there was nothing to break. What was Roy going through right now? If he was really like Jason after the coffin but before the Pit, he wasn’t feeling much of anything and wouldn’t remember it later—though Talia had told Jason that he’d cried, once, when he’d been in that state.

But Jason kept thinking Roy was like him _after_ the Pit, lost in a vortex of anger and madness and grief. Ripped violently from his rest to a world that hurt you and hurt you again and didn’t care. A life where a friend had betrayed him and his enemies exploited him and no one else lifted a goddamn finger. Did he come back with all the pain that had sent him into the grave, and all the pain of being taken out of it added on top? Or would that not happen unless Jason pushed him into the Pit?

No, not unless. _Until_. Because Jason already knew that he didn’t care if it hurt Roy to come back all the way. He didn’t _care_ if it was possible to lay Roy peacefully to rest instead, free of the loss and abandonment and hunger that had dogged him all his life. The bloody, wretched truth was that he’d rather have Roy suffering almost any pain than have him gone.

There was someone leaning over him, an arm wrapped around his shoulders, and it took Jason too long to realize that it was Cass, that she had opened the bathroom door and slipped in beside him. It took even longer to realize that he was hunched on the floor and that he was sobbing and had been for a while, painful, ugly sounds that he turned to muffle into her shoulder.

“I don’t want to miss him anymore,” he said, “he’s _mine_ ,” and it didn’t make any sense, but he felt Cass nod against his hair and knew she understood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Canon: Damian was killed by his own clone and Dinah was nearly killed by a shapeshifter disguised as Ollie on their wedding night, so they have some very specific concerns.
> 
> Canon is inconsistent on whether or not the Lazarus Pits can restore life or just heal injuries to a still-living body. I went with the latter, just to make things harder for everyone. 😈


	5. Chapter 5

In the end, six of them went to League headquarters: Jason, Jade, Damian, Ollie, Dinah, and Connor. Silently, Jason was pleased. He was sorry to be losing Cass, but she _was_ injured and he didn’t want her getting hurt worse. With her excepted, though, he was bringing away all the deadliest fighters he had at his disposal. Well, and Ollie, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

“How do you know he’s at the Switzerland base?” Jade demanded as they took off in the Batplane. Jason was getting really fucking tired of flying, and they had thirteen hours airborne ahead of them. “What if he’s still in the States? We’ll lose two days getting there and back.”

“I don’t. But _Lian_ is probably in Switzerland,” Jason said. She frowned. “Think about it. He’s obviously not carting her around. She was taken from your home, and the Swiss Pit is the closest to London. It makes way more sense that he’d leave her there rather than take a three-month-old to the States. Plus, it’s the main base, so _Merlyn_ is probably there, and we can choke some answers out of him. I’ll enjoy that. But even if he isn’t…” He shrugged. “Well, Lian’s the priority, isn’t she?”

It hurt to say it, but he knew it was true. It was true for Jade, and it had to be true for Jason, too. Roy would never have forgiven him for anything else, even if he was too out of it right now to know that the child he’d abducted was his own.

Jason had always had a soft spot for kids, but he found himself wondering when this baby he’d never met had become someone he’d walk into hell for without question. He suspected it was the moment he’d caught a hint of Roy in the shape of her face.

Jade gave him a hard look. “Lian’s the priority,” she agreed, and settled into her seat with an unease that betrayed her impatience. Jason knew the feeling.

He slept most of the way to Europe, dozing through fitful dreams of Roy drowning in a Lazarus Pit, unable to swim to the surface and unable to die. He woke with a headache and clammy sweat under his collar.

Dinah took the controls for the last shift, her piloting steady and sure. Damian sat near her to guide her to the League’s hidden airfield, and Jason stared out the window as the landscape changed to the shape of a faint memory. Not the year he’d apparently lived here, which was before the Pit and thus lost to him, but earlier than that, and sweeter.

“I was here with Roy once,” he said without meaning to. He wasn’t even sure who was close enough to hear until he glanced to his side and saw Connor, who had clearly been meditating, but didn’t protest at being disturbed.

“Not as Outlaws,” he went on. He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to explain. “When I was Robin. It was one of like, two missions I went on with the Titans, ever. There was a peace summit we were supposed to guard, and…” His gaze drifted to the window. “It was my first time in Europe.”

“Was he Arsenal then, or still Speedy?” Connor asked.

“Speedy,” Jason said. The corner of his mouth curved wryly. “Such a dumb name and I still thought he was so cool. I was shivering in my short pants and he was eighteen and a Checkmate agent and he already had all these war stories and...I don’t know. He was just…” He drifted off, at a loss for the right words for how Roy had made him feel. He’d been nervous and thrilled to be on a mission with the Titans, but more nervous and more thrilled when he was standing next to Roy, who was a full head taller than Jason back then and twice as broad and already sporting his first tattoo, which had been all too obvious since even at the time his costume didn’t have any fucking _sleeves_.

Connor made a slight noise, and Jason gave him a quizzical look.

“Sorry, it’s stupid,” Connor said. “It’s just...well. I’m a little jealous?”

Jason blinked. “Of Roy?”

“Of you, sort of.” Connor glanced over to where Ollie was leaning over the back of Dinah’s pilot seat, bickering with Damian. “The thing is, I always knew who my dad was, even when he didn’t know about me. So I followed his career from when I was really young. I think my mom still has all the scrapbooks somewhere. And when I was...I don’t know, maybe eight? All of a sudden, there was another boy fighting alongside my dad.”

“Roy,” Jason realized, as if it needed to be said out loud. Who else could it have been?

“Yeah,” Connor agreed. “Sometimes I was mad about it, but mostly I just...I just kind of wanted to be his friend, you know? I was going through a rough time at school, and I used to imagine my parents getting back together, and suddenly I’d have this cool older brother, someone to hang out with and no one would pick on me and…” He came to a sudden, clearly embarrassed stop. “Anyway. You’re the same age as me, and you knew him then, and…” He shrugged. “I wish I had. Although I guess it would have been different for me than it was for you, you know, for obvious reasons.”

Jason frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it wasn’t like you wanted him to be your _brother_.”

Jason snorted. “No. I already had Dick trying that back home in Gotham.” Connor was still giving him a curious look. “What?”

“No, nothing, sorry.” Connor paused, then smiled faintly. “He talked about you a lot, you know.”

“Really?” Jason asked. He didn’t know why he was surprised. Roy talked a lot about everything, all the time, and they _had_ worked together for years—it was only natural that he’d come up in conversation.

Jason never talked about Roy. Not before his death, and especially not after. Talking about him felt too much like giving pieces of him away, and Jason didn’t have many left.

But then, Roy had always been the more generous of the two of them.

“Yeah,” Connor said. “I think maybe that’s why Dad said that thing he did earlier, about, um, you treating Roy like a sidekick. Which he shouldn’t have said, and I’m sorry about that.”

“You don’t need to apologize. _You_ didn’t say it.”

“Well,” Connor said, with the distinct air of someone who often wound up apologizing for other people and was used to it. “I think Dad was used to Roy...you know, Dad’s not great with authority, and Roy is so much like him. More than me. He used to butt heads with Nightwing all the time, or at least that’s what I’ve gathered. So I guess Dad was worried because...well, Roy always said he’d follow you into hell, and that’s not really like him.” There was that faint, rueful smile again. “It’s kind of funny that it wound up being sort of the other way around, huh?”

Jason opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Luckily, Dinah saved him by calling out that they were coming in for a landing, and the conversation was dropped in favor of checking weapons and other gear, putting masks back on for those who wore them, and generally getting ready for action.

Dinah brought them in with an effortlessly smooth landing. Damian had warned them that the airfield was always guarded by a skeleton crew of two Ghuls when no incoming flights were expected, but these were clearly not Ra’s top fighters, because they came right up to the cabin door to see who their unannounced visitors were, and Ollie and Connor promptly put them down with tranq arrows. Damian led them to a small fleet of luxury SUVs with off-roading capabilities, and there was a brief argument over who would drive until it was pointed out that Damian’s feet couldn’t actually reach the pedals, at which point Jason took the wheel.

He was glad; the closer they got, the more he needed to do _something_. He could hear Bruce’s voice in his head, scolding him for building a theory with too many holes in it. What if his deductions were wrong? What if Lian wasn’t here, or Roy?

What if Roy couldn’t be saved?

Damian directed Jason down a series of narrow back roads that would allow them to approach the al Ghul stronghold through the service entrance. Once the chalet loomed ahead of them, they left the vehicle and went forward on foot.

And maybe Jade had been thinking the same thing Jason had, about Roy, because she suddenly put a hand on his chest and held him back, letting the others get further ahead.

“I need you to understand something,” she said. There was a crack in her expression he’d never seen before, one that looked like grief. “I don’t care what you think of me or whether you believe me, but I loved Roy. Truly, I did.” The line of her jaw went hard. “But if it’s a choice between taking him down and letting Lian get hurt, I will kill him. I don’t care if he’s brainwashed.”

“I understand,” Jason said, because he did, didn’t he? It was what they’d been dancing around before; it was what Roy would have wanted. “If it’s to save Lian, I won’t stop you. But if you kill Roy, I will kill _you_ , as soon as she’s safe.”

“You can _try_ ,” she said, with a hint of her usual spark. “And if you manage it, you had better take damn good care of her.”

He nodded. They understood each other. “I promise,” he said.

When they caught up with the others, no one asked what they’d been talking about. Damian just nodded up at the chalet, which was a ludicrous word for a structure that rivaled Wayne Manor for size.

“Well, Todd? You lived here for over a year. Do you remember it?”

Jason’s only memory of Switzerland was Roy, young and strong and smiling. “No.”

“Where’s the main entrance to the Lazarus Pit?”

“Through the kitchen, under the pantry. There’s a hidden door in the root cellar,” Jason said automatically, then blinked. He was right, he knew he was right...but _how_ did he know he was right?

Damian smiled. “I thought it might be in there somewhere. Good.”

“Do you think the baby will be near the Pit, though?” Dinah asked. “Or in one of the guest rooms? Is there a nursery?”

“There was mine,” Damian said, looking disturbed at the thought of someone else using it. Jason fought a laugh. Typical youngest.

“We don’t want to be here too long, so we should split up,” Jason said. “Damian, take Jade to the nursery, and anywhere else aboveground you think Lian might be. The rest of us will go to the Pit. Damian and I will stay on comms so we’ll know if either team finds Lian or Roy.”

Damian drew himself up to his full, tiny height. “Are you attempting to give me orders in my grandfather’s domain?”

Any other time, Jason would have given him the fight he expected, and enjoyed it. Today, he was just too goddamn tired.

“No,” he said seriously. “I’m asking you to help me save my best friend’s daughter. Please, Damian.”

Damian stared at him for a long moment, as if he could read anything through Jason’s helmet. “All right,” he finally relented.

Jason half expected Jade to kick up a fuss at Damian taking point, but apparently she’d been with the League long enough to know what Damian meant to them, because all she said was, “Let’s go. They find me with the kid, they’ll either make me his betrothed or kill us both on sight.”

“Let’s hope for the latter,” Damian said, wrinkling his nose.

Jason nodded at Jade. “Go get your girl.”

She gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Go get our boy.”

Damian and Jade slipped upstairs, and Jason led the others down corridors he didn’t remember, but knew just the same. It was an odd feeling.

They were lucky; they only encountered two other people on the way, and both were household staff, not Ghuls. It was easy to slip around corners and duck into alcoves to avoid them. Dinah and Connor moved as silently as Bats, and Ollie...well, they didn’t get caught, at least.

There was a cook doing prep work in the kitchen, but Connor took her down gently with a tranq arrow before she even knew they were there.

“I hope you brought a lot of those,” Jason muttered as they hid her unconscious body in the pantry to keep their presence from being discovered the minute someone walked into the kitchen for a snack. “Or that you’re ready to start using the real things, because they play for keeps here.”

“Do I tell you how to hang upside down and creep people out?” Ollie asked. “I have what I need in my quiver, Spooky Jr. Let’s go.”

Jason rolled his eyes behind his helmet and opened the trap door that led to the root cellar. The door to the Pit was behind what appeared to be a built-in shelving unit; Jason pressed on it and it swung out from the wall, revealing a spiral staircase hewn into the rock and descending into darkness.

“No guards?” Connor asked as they slipped in and the shelves closed behind them.

“Why bother?” Jason asked. “The airfield is hidden. The chalet is hidden. The door is hidden. And anyone down here is a Ghul. If they can’t defend themselves from an intruder, they’re better off getting their throats slit by us than waiting for whatever Ra’s will do to them for failing.”

“I get it now,” Ollie grumbled. “It was your cheery disposition that made Roy like you so much.”

“Oliver,” Dinah said, a low warning.

“Eh, I’m just whistling in the dark,” Ollie said, but he let it drop.

It wasn’t actually all that dark; the staircase was lined with sconces lit with green, flickering witchlight, which wouldn’t burn out—had been burning, in fact, long before the discovery of electricity. Talia had told Jason about it once, after his memory had been restored, along with whatever was left of his soul.

It was a long descent, though, and though Jason didn’t remember the witchlight, he couldn’t help feeling as though it remembered him.

When they reached the bottom of the steps, they opened up into the underground League complex, which was even bigger than the chalet, with paths branching off in every direction. Jason realized that he had perhaps underestimated the task ahead of them. The only thought in his head since he’d seen those blue eyes again had been to get to Roy, to get to Roy and make him _real_ again. But Roy—and Merlyn, they had to keep an eye out for him, too—could be anywhere down here. Or in the house. Or at another base entirely, _fuck_.

“Jesus,” Ollie said, taking in the scale of the place. “This is going to take forever. Okay, what’s in what direction, kid?”

Jason drew on the knowledge he didn’t remember gaining, and pointed. “Barracks for the rank and file are down that way. I have no idea if they’d be full right now or not, it depends on current strategic operations. Elite operatives like Merlyn would be housed in the chalet upstairs.” And himself and Jade, he didn’t say. “Training rooms are over there. The Pit itself is downstairs. Um...armory’s that way.”

The _armory_. He’d never exchanged a four-way glance with anyone but his brothers before, when Bruce was being particularly...Bruce, but he did it now.

“Armory,” Dinah said, and Connor nodded.

“You’re damn right the armory,” Ollie said. “If anything of Roy is left in there, that’s where he’ll be.”

Jason didn’t want to contemplate how big that “if” was, so he just turned and led the way. The Roy he knew, _his_ Roy, had never met a weapon that didn’t fascinate him, and Ra’s al Ghul had what might be the world’s greatest collection of ancient arms and armor. Nothing could have kept Roy away from it, any more than Bruce could be kept from a mystery or Jason could be kept from a chance to completely fuck up his entire life.

A Roy with no interest in authentic fifteenth century glaives might well be a Roy who was lost to them for good.

They met no Ghuls on their way to the armory, which might have been luck, but luck wasn’t something that was usually in Jason’s corner. Maybe Ollie was preternaturally lucky and balancing out Jason—or maybe they were going to meet a shitton of Ghuls at precisely the wrong moment. Right now, Jason didn’t care about anything that wasn’t getting to Roy as fast as possible.

As they neared the armory doors, they heard the muffled thump of metal. _Someone_ was in there, at least.

Jason glanced at Ollie and Connor. “Cover me,” he said, because _their_ ranged weapons were mostly silent and not lethal unless they wanted them to be, and yanked the doors open.

It wasn’t the biggest room in the complex by far, but it still dwarfed them. The unfinished cavern roof had to be twenty feet high, and the walls were mounted nearly to the top with an endless collection of weapons, all in perfect condition, dating back centuries and representing every corner of the globe. Jason could have walked out of this room with just what he could carry in two hands and sell it for enough to let him retire to his own private island in style.

But all he could see was Roy.

He’d turned to face them when the doors opened. He was stripped to the waist, gleaming with perspiration in the witchlight. His beautiful hair had been shorn to a buzz cut, the color muddy in the cavern’s greenish glow, and Jason felt a pulse of fury that someone had done that to him, had touched him so intimately when he hadn’t even known enough to protest. The rest of him was exactly as Jason remembered, no new scars or bruises or _anything_ on his skin to suggest that he had died and come back wrong. Just his tattoos, and those hurt to look at, because those were _Roy_ , he had _chosen_ them. Back when he had been able to choose.

Jason took all of this in in a nanosecond, as well as the fact that Roy was holding a scimitar in each hand—medieval Persian shamshirs, Jason thought, though he couldn’t be sure—because Roy was already turning to charge at them, and Jason spared a second to be grateful that even _Roy_ couldn’t accurately throw a scimitar.

Or maybe he could, because one arm was already coming back for a windup. “Uh, someone with a bow want to disarm him already?” Jason snapped, even as he got ready to duck and hopefully not lose a limb.

There was the familiar _shunk!_ of an arrow flying by him. It hit the sword Roy was preparing to throw close to the hilt and _hard_ , so hard even Jason winced at how bad the impact must have stung. Roy’s face didn’t change, though, even as he dropped the sword and shook out what had to be temporarily numb fingers.

Another arrow whizzed by on Jason’s other side, aiming for the other sword, but Roy juked right and it missed.

Jason was already moving, running straight for Roy, yanking off his helmet and tossing it to the side in the faint, desperate hope that his friend might recognize him without it. His All-Blades itched at his back, waiting to be drawn, but he ignored them. He would _not_ draw a blade on Roy—not now, not like this. Not ever. He’d let Roy slit his throat first.

“He’s still got a _sword_ , you crazy son of a bitch—!” he heard Ollie shout from behind him, but Jason was already ducking under Roy’s swing and plowing a shoulder into his solar plexus.

The sword came down and Jason gasped as it bit through his jacket and into his shoulder blade. He turned, getting farther inside Roy’s guard, digging for the pressure point he knew was in the soft inner side of his upper arm, just below his bicep…

Roy gasped, just a soundless exhalation, and the scimitar clattered to the cave floor.

“Roy!” Jason said. “Come on, it’s me, it’s Jason. I don’t want to fight you!”

He’d turned so far his back was practically flush against Roy’s chest. Roy’s arm came up across his throat, solid tattooed bicep cutting off his air, and Jason choked and rolled, dropping them both to the ground. Roy hit first, knocking the wind out of him, and then they were scrabbling on the ground again, messy and desperate.

It was like their fight earlier but worse, because the cave floor was much rougher and harder than Ollie’s lawn and Jason had an open wound in his back now; worse because he _knew_ it was Roy trying to kill him. It was like the hundreds of times they’d sparred in the past, but though Roy had never held back on Jason before—he’d known Jason wouldn’t put up with it—he’d always _joked_ , too, trash talked and teased. He’d never been this silent. His face had never been this blank.

Roy got a knee in Jason’s kidney. Jason’s head butted Roy’s mouth and Roy came away with bloody teeth.

Roy broke one of Jason’s ribs.

He felt it fracture, thought he could _hear_ it snap between them. There was no stopping the scream that escaped him.

“Roy, goddamn it!” Ollie shouted and Jason heard them all start forward. Roy pinned Jason to the floor, slipped a hand inside his jacket, and pulled out his kris. The waved blade kissed Jason’s throat, and Dinah and the archers froze.

“Roy, _please_ ,” Dinah said.

“Come on, fella.” Ollie’s voice broke. Jason’s gaze flicked past Roy to see Ollie with an arrow pointed at the back of Roy’s head. “Don’t make me do it, son.”

“Don’t,” Jason managed, though Roy was leaning all his weight on that broken rib and the sword wound was rubbed raw against the stone floor. He could feel a line of heat against his neck; the kris was too sharp not to break skin on contact. Roy could kill him with a flick of his wrist.

But he had known exactly where Jason kept his knife. He had _remembered_.

He was still in there.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, bringing his gaze back to Roy’s face, two inches from his own. Still blank. Still so familiar it _ached_. “You about done with the whole zombie thing now?”

Roy just stared at him, but he didn’t move his hand. Just like he hadn’t taken the shot in Gotham, or San Francisco, or Star City. Jason didn’t know if it was because he wasn’t one of Roy’s programmed targets, or because Roy just didn’t want to. He decided to hope it was the latter.

“You want to let me up?” he tried. _Fuck_ , it hurt to talk. He kept going. “You kinda messed me up here, and I could use some medical attention. Besides, there’s someone upstairs I want to introduce you to. I mean, I haven’t met her yet either, but I think you’re really gonna love her.”

Roy’s expression didn’t change. His freckles had faded, Jason noticed. Too long underground.

“Come on, Roy. It’s _me_. You know me.” Jason’s eyes stung. “It’s Jaybird.”

Something happened then, something that Jason would never have seen if he hadn’t been watching Roy so closely. A ghost of a memory flickering across those blue eyes. A momentary tremor in those red-gold lashes.

A _reaction_.

“ _Roy_ ,” Jason tried for, what, the third time? The fourth? The way he’d been saying Roy’s name inside his chest since Bruce had told him Roy was dead?

Roy’s brows creased. It was only the faintest hint of confusion, but it was the first real expression Jason had gotten out of him.

He pulled the knife back. Jason didn’t move, didn’t _breathe_ , as Roy lowered his head those final inches. His nose brushed Jason’s pulse point, inhaling, and Jason imagined his blood surging to meet Roy. He turned his head slowly, so slowly so as not to startle Roy, until his lips brushed the soft warm skin of Roy’s temple.

There were three sounds behind Roy in quick succession, and Roy went rigid. So did Jason. He’d been in this business long enough to know what bodies hitting the floor sounded like.

“Knock him out,” said a male voice that was faintly familiar. Roy rose up, the blank expression back on his face. The hilt of the kris came down on Jason’s skull and everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Canon: Canon is deeply inconsistent on where League headquarters/the various Lazarus Pits are, but I saw one source saying Switzerland and I ran with it, since it jives pretty well with _Red Hood: The Lost Days_ and also the Titans storyline Jason refers to in this chapter, where he joined the team on a trip to the Alps. (In canon, that's when Roy finds out he's a father, but that's not the case here for obvious reasons.)
> 
> Connor says Ollie didn't know about him when he was a kid. This was the original canon; later retcons said that Ollie _did_ know and knowingly abandoned Connor and his mother, but I do not perceive those retcons and they are nothing to me.
> 
> Anyway, aw Jason, catch a clue already, you big dumbo.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Warning: A villain in this chapter repeatedly refers to characters of color by the wrong names, because he's a racist dick. Don't do this.

Waking up to pain was not a new experience for Jason. Waking up to Oliver Queen shouting, however, was.

“—get my hands on my bow, I won’t even bother with arrows. I’ll just beat his smug, pointy-haired, weird-bearded face in with it, that crusty old son-stealing, cult-joining, robber baron bastard!”

Jason winced without opening his eyes. His head throbbed, his rib was like a spike of fresh hell in the middle of his torso, and his back didn’t feel so great either. Also, he couldn’t seem to move. “Shut up,” he croaked.

“Oh look, Romeo’s back in the land of the living,” Ollie said. “What the hell did you think you were doing? We could have tranqued Roy and had him out of here if you hadn’t felt the need to go all ancient Greek on us.”

“Listen,” Jason started, opening his eyes for the express purpose of glaring at Ollie, and then forgetting what he’d been about to say as he took in where they were.

It was another subterranean room, so clearly they were still in the underground part of the League’s headquarters. Jason was lying on his side, his arms cuffed behind him, and something heavy and unyielding around his neck. Considering the others were all wearing metal collars and handcuffs that were chained to each other and then to the wall behind them, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was around his neck, or why he couldn’t move. Well, the tetanus getting into the open wound on his neck should be fun.

Ollie was next to Jason, with Dinah beyond him and Connor on the other side of her. Dinah’s collar was different than the others, with some kind of mechanism attached to the front, presumably to dampen her Canary Cry. They were all sitting or kneeling, which was as high up as they could get thanks to the relatively short chains. Jason gritted his teeth and started to force himself upright.

“We’re not done yet,” he said, and belatedly remembered his communicator. He should have called Damian the instant he saw Roy, but it was like rational thought had fled. “Robin—”

“I’m afraid it might be some time before I can come up with a daring rescue,” Damian drawled—not in his ear, but from his other side.

“Fuck,” Jason muttered, getting himself to his knees with a gasp of pain and turning towards his left, the side he hadn’t been able to see when he was lying down. Sure enough, Damian and Jade were chained on that side, exactly like the rest of them.

“The baby?” Jason asked.

“We didn’t even make it to the nursery,” Jade snarled. There was a cut over her eyebrow, the blood dried a rusty brown. Jason wondered how long he’d been out. “A handful of Ghuls got the drop on us. You too, from what Errol Flynn over there says.”

Damian was still wearing his mask, but Jason knew when someone was meeting his eyes through whiteout lenses. “I have been too long away. Gotham made me soft,” he said, as if Gotham had ever made anyone anything but either hard or dead. “I failed you, and I failed the child. I’m sorry.”

Jason wasn’t sure he’d ever heard Damian apologize for anything before, and it sat like something gone curdled and wrong in his gut. If Damian was apologizing, maybe they were done after all.

“We’ll find her,” Dinah said from his other side. “If they wanted to hurt the baby, they would have done that, not kidnapped her. We’ll get out of here, and we’ll get her back.”

“If we don’t, I’ll kill every last one of them,” Jade said. “I’ll make the Demon’s Head himself beg for his miserable life before I rip the heart from his chest.”

“Oh, Cheshire. Still as dramatic as ever, I see,” said the vaguely familiar voice that had told Roy to knock Jason out, and Malcolm Merlyn entered the room, with Roy behind him.

Jason had never paid much attention to Malcolm, even during his conscious time with the League. He’d never had much time for assassins with _themes_ , and nothing about Malcolm, a wiry bit of unpleasantness with a face like a hatchet and a beard even stupider than Ollie’s, had convinced him to think otherwise. But he’d been good enough to earn a place among Ra’s al Ghul’s inner circle, and he’d been good enough to mastermind the past twenty-four hours or so of misery. _Days_ of misery, for Jade.

God only knew how long, for Roy.

Roy had put a shirt on—or been told to put a shirt on, probably—but the mask and hood were still off. His expression was still flat, but Jason thought he saw Roy glance his way, just for a second.

Jade surging forward, straining at her chains. “Merlyn!” she snapped. “Where the _fuck_ is my daughter, you son of a bitch?”

“She’s perfectly fine. Calm yourself,” Malcolm said. “I wouldn’t hurt her. She’s already been very useful to me, and I see no reason why that shouldn’t continue.”

“She’s not going to be very useful to you after I give you something that will make you vomit up your own lungs while your eyeballs dissolve inside your skull,” Jade growled.

Malcolm’s eyebrows went up. “Vivid,” he said, sounding unperturbed. Fair enough. They _were_ all chained to the wall. “But if it’ll make you feel better…” He raised his voice, turning towards the open doorway. “Bring Rebecca in here, would you?”

Another man entered the room, and Jason blinked, because the newcomer was wearing the same outfit as Roy, but with added mask and hood. He was a little shorter, a little broader, but if they hadn’t been standing next to each other Jason wasn’t sure he would have known the difference.

He held Lian in his arms, swaddled in the livid olive green of Ra’s al Ghul’s cloak. Jason found himself hoping it was his _actual_ cloak, and that Lian took a big, stinky dump in it. She looked alert enough to do so, her bright eyes looking around the room curiously.

Jason heard Jade’s breath catch beside him. “Lian,” she breathed.

Lian turned at the sound of her voice and smiled a big happy toothless smile at the sight of her mommy. Jade hurled herself fruitlessly against her chains, muscles visibly straining and her face darkening as the collar choked her. “Give her back!”

“Oh, I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Malcolm said. “Rebecca is a crucial part of my new family.”

“Her _name_ is _Lian_ ,” Jade spat.

Malcolm smiled. “Not anymore. Now she honors my late wife, god rest her soul.”

“Did it honor Rebecca when you cheated on her with my _mother_ , you hypocritical bastard?” Ollie asked.

“ _I’m_ the hypocrite?” Malcolm asked. “You’re awfully indignant considering that this is all _your_ doing, Oliver.”

“I don’t recall forcing you to steal a baby!” Ollie snapped.

“You left me with no legacy,” Malcolm replied. “If you had only become my protege decades ago, we would never have come to this pass. But you always were willful. Just like your father. Who was no more faithful than your mother or me, I might remind you.”

“You don’t get to talk about my parents,” Ollie snarled through gritted teeth.

“I have no interest in talking about your parents,” Malcolm said, squatting down in front of him, just out of reach. “They were disappointments. You could have been something better, but instead you wasted your time with dissipation and then with… _this_.” He waved a hand to indicate Ollie’s suit and presumably career as Green Arrow by implication. “Not to mention that you got my son killed.”

“That is _not_ what happened.”

“You have a lot to answer for, Oliver,” Malcolm said, straightening up. “Tommy was always inadequate, but his ultimate fate is all down to you.” He strolled back to Roy, casual and smug and clearly delighted with his literally captive audience. “However, you did do one thing right.”

Roy didn’t flinch when Malcolm’s hand landed on his shoulder. He didn’t react at all.

“You know, I thought you were insane for taking a child into the field,” Malcolm said. “I thought he’d either die young or end up just like you. I suppose I was right on both counts.”

“Don’t you touch him,” Ollie said, before Jason could.

Malcolm ignored him. “I underestimated him for years—but then we all did, didn’t we? You certainly seemed willing to throw him away. And not just once.” He glanced at Connor. “A word of advice, young Queen: don’t look to your father for loyalty.”

Connor’s gaze was level. “I trust his loyalty more than I trust your advice.”

Malcolm shrugged. “As you like. It won’t matter for much longer, anyway.” He turned back to Roy. “The Demon’s Head is obsessed with the Bat and his sons. Even the unmanageable ones.” He nodded towards Jason, who bared his teeth. “Always searching for his ‘perfect heir’ in that motley assortment of broken boys. But you found a gem, didn’t you, Oliver? As skilled as a Bat, and so much more eager to please.” He stroked Roy’s shorn head. “I didn’t even have to teach him to shoot.”

Jason was throwing himself forward before he could think, fighting against his chains. “Get your hands off of him!” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ollie and Dinah doing the same.

“Why?” Malcolm asked as his hand slid from Roy’s skull to curve possessively around the nape of his neck. Jason’s blood boiled. “He’s mine. After all, Oliver threw him away a second time, didn’t he?”

“What are you _talking_ about, you creepy lunatic?” Ollie demanded. “He _died!_ ”

“So did you,” Malcolm pointed out. “You came back. But you didn’t even _try_ to save the son you claim to love.” He smiled, snakelike and cold. “Luckily, I had already been considering Roy as a potential heir, after he fought the League on behalf of _this_ one.” He nodded towards Jason again. “My only concern is that he is so very loyal. It would have taken ages to break him. But dead? He was a blank slate.”

Jason tasted bile. Roy had only run afoul of the League because of _him_ , him and his stupid, cowardly decisions. He wouldn’t be Malcolm’s dead-eyed pet if not for Jason.

Then again, he’d be dead. Jason wasn’t sure which was worse, and hated himself for not knowing.

“So how’d you do it?” Ollie asked. “Desecrate my son’s grave, dip him in the Pit behind your boss’s back?”

“For the thousandth time, the Pit can’t bring people back to life,” Damian said. Jason didn’t have to look at him to know he was rolling his eyes.

“ _There_ you are, Ibn al Xu’ffasch,” Malcolm said. “If only you had been this uncharacteristically quiet when I trained you.”

“If only I had slit your throat with your own arrows,” Damian retorted. “Kidnapping a _baby_ , Merlyn? That’s low, even for a bottomfeeder like you.”

“Ah, but Rebecca was vital for my plans,” Malcolm said. “The Pit cannot restore life, true. I needed a soul for that. But do you know where souls come from?”

“Oh my _god_ , just get to the point, you wingnut,” Dinah said.

Malcolm continued as if she’d complimented his infuriatingly smug monologue. “From our parents, of course. Which meant that there was a little bit of Roy Harper’s soul hidden inside a brand-new life.” It was Lian’s turn to have a possessive hand rested on her head. “Which was exactly what I needed.”

“What did you do to my daughter?” Jade asked, low and dangerous.

Malcolm removed his hand to wave it carelessly. “Just drew a little blood. She’s fine, as you can see. But a little blood, a little Lazarus Pit water, a few things I’m not going to tell you, and Roy Harper was once again among the living. And as long as I keep administering that serum, he’ll remain that way.”

Jason frowned. “If you needed Lian to resurrect Roy, who kidnapped her in the first place?” The question was a bit disingenuous; he didn’t have to have been trained by Batman to know it was the silent, masked man holding her. And he had a pretty good guess who that man was, but he needed to _know_.

Sure enough, the masked man shifted Lian to one arm so that he could pull back his hood and tug off his mask, revealing a face half-covered with burn scars that couldn’t disguise his resemblance to Malcolm. “I did,” he said.

“Tommy,” Ollie said, confirming Jason’s suspicions. He didn’t sound surprised either. “No.”

Tommy Merlyn. That was why the blood hadn’t shown up as Roy’s when Jason had analyzed it—it _hadn’t_ been Roy’s, and Tommy was too obscure to have a record with any law enforcement agency. Roy had still been dead when Lian was kidnapped. But it had been Roy in Gotham and San Francisco, Jason was sure of it. He knew the way Roy shot. He knew the way Roy _moved_.

“Don’t sound so betrayed, Ollie,” Tommy said. “This didn’t have anything to do with you.”

“You kidnapped my granddaughter, so yeah, I think it has a little to do with me,” Ollie snapped.

“She’s fine,” Tommy said. Lian smiled again and reached for the mask dangling from his free hand, and he let her tug at it. “See? Besides, you didn’t even know about her a day ago. And do you really think life with a single supervillain mother would be better for her?”

“I’m going to kill you _excruciatingly_ slowly,” Jade retorted.

“Tommy, what the hell,” Ollie said. “You really hate me that much?”

“Again, Ollie, this isn’t about you,” Tommy snapped. “Do you think you could try to wrap your head around that for once in your life?”

“Agreed,” Malcolm said, putting a hand on Tommy’s shoulder. The naked hopefulness in Tommy’s expression as he looked at his father was painful to see, and Jason couldn’t help wondering, just for a second, if he looked at Bruce like that. “This isn’t about the Queens, because they will soon be no more. This is about the Merlyns.”

“What do you mean, we’ll be no more?” Ollie asked. “It’s hardly a vast dynasty. Just me.”

“I don’t know whether you think I’m stupid or you’re attempting very poorly to be modest, but we both know that’s not true,” Malcolm said. “I know Robert left a daughter. I know you have two brats of your own, even if they don’t share your last name. I know about the girl you adopted from the street. And then of course there’s Roy and Rebecca.”

“ _Her name is Lian!_ ” Jade and Jason shouted at the same time.

“You have a sister, and two generations of children to follow after you,” Malcolm said, ignoring them. “I’m a quarter century older than you and all I have is one disappointing son.” Tommy flinched. “Until now.”

Ollie rolled his eyes. “Fine. Yes. I get it. You’re going to kill me. Very creative. Just shut up, get it over with, and let Roy and Lian and the others go.”

“I’m afraid you’ve gotten it backwards, Oliver,” Malcolm said. His smile was dark and predatory. “As Tommy keeps trying to tell you, this isn’t about you. It’s about your legacy.” He took the baby out of Tommy’s arms and cradled her head against his shoulder as he moved closer to Ollie, just out of range. “I’m not going to kill _you_. I am, however, going to kill your sister. I’m going to kill your biological son and both of your daughters. I’m going to kill your woman, because I don’t want to risk you having another kid, and quite frankly just because it will hurt you.”

“You can fucking _try_ ,” Dinah snapped. “Also, his _woman?_ You sexist fucking fossil.”

Malcolm ignored her. “I’m going to eradicate the legacy of the Queen family once and for all, and I’m going to leave you alive to suffer, in your loneliness and your failure. And the best part? None of them will die at my hand. Roy will do it, because he belongs to me, now. The perfect son I never had.”

Tommy might have flinched again. Jason didn’t notice; he was too busy hurling himself against his chains. “You fucking—!”

Roy would never forgive himself. Even if he wasn’t really awake in there, if there was still some tiny part of him that could understand...if he was forced to kill his family and he _knew_ …

Jason wouldn’t let that happen. He _refused_.

“He won’t do it,” Dinah said.

“Never,” Ollie agreed. “I don’t care what you’ve done to his mind. Roy would never hurt his family.”

“Oh, Oliver. He barely _has_ a mind anymore,” Malcolm said, with a regretful little sigh, like he was disappointed to hear that the ice cream parlor had run out of his favorite flavor. “That’s the price I pay for obedience, I suppose. I should have taken him from you when he was twelve, but I didn’t see the potential then.” He shrugged. “Luckily, Rebecca is still young enough to be molded into a proper Merlyn without dying first. And unlike the Demon’s Head, I have no problem with a female heir, despite what Black Canary thinks of my gender politics. Roy will be an obedient soldier, but Rebecca...Rebecca will be my masterpiece.”

“And so much for your real son, huh?” Ollie demanded. “ _This_ is what you kidnapped my granddaughter for, Tommy? To be replaced by her? Was it worth it?”

“Shut up, Ollie,” Tommy snapped. “You don’t understand. You’ve always gotten everything you wanted.”

“Yeah, I definitely wanted to be chained to a wall while your jackass father threatens to kill my family. All my dreams have come true, lucky me.” Ollie shook his head. “There _is_ such a thing as taking filial piety a bit too far, you know. Running errands for an abusive murderer definitely qualifies. What _happened_ to you, Tommy?” Something besides anger crept into Ollie’s voice. “You were always the best of your family. You don’t owe him _anything_.”

Tommy’s expression faltered, but Malcolm cut in before he could say anything.

“You’re rather indignant for someone who isn’t going to win any father of the year awards any time soon,” he said. “Tell me, Oliver, how many children have you fathered and then abandoned? Have you found them all for the little game of Lord Bountiful you’ve been playing lately? Or are there more surprises for Ms. Lance hiding in various cabbage patches around the world?” He looked at Connor. “What do you think, young Queen? Can you honestly say your father has never let you down?”

“My father and I have a complicated history, but I don’t doubt that he loves me,” Connor said—but he was looking at Tommy, not Malcolm. “He loves all of us. He certainly doesn’t degrade us in front of strangers.”

Jason bit back a grin as Tommy looked away, jaw working. Nicely done, Connor.

“No. He just abandons you,” Malcolm said. “You. Your sister. Your _brother_.” His hand was back on the nape of Roy’s neck. Roy’s eyes were still so blank.

“All of you are so self- _righteous_ ,” Malcolm went on. “You call me a murderer, as if there’s a single one of you who isn’t a _monk_ who doesn’t have blood on their hands. You don’t like my plans for Roy? _I saved him_. Where were any of you when he lay cold in his grave? Where were you when he walked into that death trap disguised as salvation? Roy Harper went to his death knowing no one loved him. Now he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore, because he belongs to me.”

“That’s such bullshit,” Dinah said. “ _We_ loved him. His family _loves_ him, that’s why we’re _here_. His sisters adore him. His friends, his teammates—do you know how many people we had to talk out of coming here once they heard his name? You’re lucky you don’t have the Justice League and the Titans and half the Green Lantern Corps up your ass right now.”

Malcolm smirked. “And yet it was one of those _friends_ who killed—”

“Shut up!” she snapped. “You don’t get to fucking talk right now. I don’t care what garbage you’ve filled his head with, what kind of fucked up programming you’ve tried to run on him, but it’s not going to work, because it’s not _true_.” She visibly dismissed Malcolm and looked at Roy. “Roy, honey, please. You’re stronger than this jackass. You’re the strongest person I know. _Please_.”

Roy’s expression didn’t waver, flat and blank and devoid of the life and humor that had always meant _Roy_ to Jason. Malcolm’s smirk widened.

“Listen to her, fella,” Ollie said. “All that we’ve been through together and you’re gonna roll over for _Merlyn?_ You’re better than this. I was always the one who took the easy way out, not you. Don’t give up now.”

“You’re my brother,” Connor said. “You’re my hero. Roy, _please_.”

Suddenly everyone was talking at once, Ollie and Dinah and Connor and Jade and even Damian, and the noise was overwhelming. Roy’s face stayed vacant, the perfect summer blue of his eyes as distant as the actual sky. Jason’s head hurt and his rib hurt and his back hurt and he was probably going to die again today, die and leave Roy in the clutches of this sadistic creep, and the worst part was that he had never _said_ it, never even let himself _think_ it, and now Roy would never _know_ —

“ _I_ love you.”

For a second the whole world seemed shocked into silence. Jason took it and filled it because goddamn it, he was so fucking tired of sharing. He’d grieved Roy alone; he’d claim him alone, too. He’d earned that much.

“I love you,” he said again. “So fucking much, Roy, and I know you can fucking hear me in there, because you never left me before, not even when I told you to, not even when I tried to _make_ you. I don’t care if your family wants you back, or your friends, or your teammates, or your ex, or even your kid. I don’t give a _shit_ who else has a claim on Roy Harper. _I_ love you, and that means you belong to _me_ and not Malcolm _fucking_ Merlyn. So _wake up!_ ”

He didn’t realize until he was done that he was screaming it, throwing himself against the furthest reach of his chains until his throat and wrists were raw. He didn’t realize that the others were all staring at him, with even Malcolm looking faintly stunned.

All he knew was that Roy was blinking at him, soft and dazed, and it wasn’t _Roy_ , not really, but it was so much closer than it had been that Jason wanted to cry.

“Well,” Malcolm said, sounding faintly nonplussed. “Not what I would have expected from the Red Hood, but full marks for theatricality. You realize it doesn’t change anything, of course.” His smug expression returned. “He’s not _in there_ and locked away from you. I only brought back what I needed. What you’re looking for, it’s gone.” He shook his head. “Enjoy the time you left. Maybe praise each other for being so eloquent. None of you will live past sunset.”

He started for the door, then paused when he realized he was alone. “Roy, Tommy, come on,” he snapped, and they both followed him out. Tommy didn’t look back.

Roy did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Canon: Tommy's mother is never named in the comics, but on _Arrow_ her name is Rebecca, so that's what I went with here. 
> 
> Malcolm absolutely had creepy designs on Ollie in Rebirth. So creepy!
> 
> The incident with Roy and Jason that he’s referring to is from the New 52 RHatO series, when Jason decides to give himself amnesia because memories are hard and then he almost becomes the head of the League of Assassins because why not and it's all very stupid and Roy agrees with me.
> 
> Ibn al Xu’ffasch is Damian’s Arabic (I believe; Arabic speakers please correct me if I’m wrong)/League name and means “Son of the Bat.”
> 
> And finally, Ollie absolutely used to call Roy “fella” regularly in the Silver Age and it shatters my poor little heart every time.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Suicidal ideation for everyone! Sorry.

There was a long, uncomfortable silence after Malcolm left.

“...Todd,” Ollie started at one point.

“Don’t,” Jason said.

Ollie didn’t.

Jason slumped against the wall, trying to use it to keep his broken rib from getting too far out of alignment. He knew he should be thinking of how to escape, to find a lockpick hidden somewhere in his gear or break his thumbs to slip his cuffs. But all he could think about was the way Roy had turned to look back at him as he walked out of the room.

Had he heard what Jason had said to him? Had he understood it?

Was there some small part of him that might feel the same way?

It was a stupid, childish fear, like he was a fifteen-year-old with a crush again—because that was what he’d been, wasn’t it, all those years ago? Roy was brainwashed, or only half-resurrected, or _something_ , and the rest of them were sentenced to death. This was hardly the time to wonder if Roy loved him back.

But god, he wanted Roy to love him back.

“...How much longer do you think it is until sunset?” Damian finally asked. Jason could not have said how much time had passed to save his life.

_Fuck_ , he was an asshole. Damian was a bratty little monster, but he was still Jason’s baby brother, and he’d come all this way to help him, and Jason wasn’t even _trying_ to save him. He _was_ curious whether Malcolm actually had the balls to kill Ra’s al Ghul’s grandson in League headquarters—and, if he managed it and got caught after the fact, what kind of punishment Ra’s would mete out—but it was mostly a rhetorical question. It wasn’t going to come to that point.

“Far enough,” he said. “We’re going to get out of this.”

“I’d call for Superboy, but he doesn’t live in this century anymore,” Damian said, sounding uncharacteristically morose. “Besides, Grandfather uses magic dampeners. No Kryptonians could hear us.”

“Well, they might be able to, because _I_ could hear you halfway down the hall,” said a familiar but unexpected voice. “If you’re going to plan your escape, you might want to keep it down.”

“Tommy?” Ollie said as his childhood best friend walked into the room, still holding Lian, and shut the door behind him. They hadn’t bothered to close it last time. Did that mean that _Tommy_ was going to kill them, and not Roy? Then why had he brought the baby?

“Shhh!” Tommy hissed. “Do you _want_ some random Ghul to come in here to see what’s going on?”

He knelt next to Jade, who gave him a look of pure loathing, even as Lian reached out chubby hands for her. “I will kill you for taking my daughter from me. Painfully,” she promised.

“Please don’t. I’d hate to drop the baby,” he said, and pulled out a key.

“What the fuck,” Jason said.

“You’re letting us _go?_ ” Ollie asked, _way_ too loud, and Tommy winced.

“Oh my god, Ollie, have you ever been quiet even once in your life?” he asked.

“No,” Dinah and Connor said in unison.

Ollie made an offended—but muted—noise. Tommy chuckled humorlessly and inserted the key into one of Jade’s cuffs, a little awkwardly with Lian in the other arm and wriggling to get to her mother.

“I don’t understand,” Jade said. “You were the one who kidnapped her in the first place. You helped set all of this into motion. Why are you doing this?”

“What’s _your_ father like?” he asked dryly.

“I tried to kill him once.”

Tommy huffed another laugh-adjacent sound. “Yeah, well...some of us can’t self-emancipate that cleanly. And he said that he needed me.” He fumbled with the key. “But Lian…it didn’t mean anything before I did it. Taking her. But once I did...”

He sighed and looked down at the baby. Lian dimpled up at him, and he gave her a misty smile.

“No one should be raised by my father.”

He turned the key, and one of Jade’s cuffs opened with a click. Jason half expected her to instantly drag her nails across his throat—but of course, that would make him drop the baby.

Instead, she knelt quietly but clearly vibrating with impatience until her other wrist was free, then opened her arms. Tommy handed Lian to her, and Jade hid her face in the dark, downy hair on Lian’s head, barely seeming to notice as Tommy unlocked her collar as well and gently removed it from around her neck.

He moved to Ollie next, unlocking the cuffs and collar more confidently when he wasn’t juggling a three-month-old. “Ollie…”

“I’m sorry,” Ollie said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed as hell at you. But I’m sorry I threw that stupid party. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. I’m sorry your father’s such a _jackass_.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said as Ollie’s collar and cuffs fell away. “Me too.”

Their gear was piled carelessly in a corner—whether to taunt them with its proximity, or because Malcolm simply hadn’t had time to decide what to do with it, Jason didn’t know. Ollie went and collected it as Tommy freed the rest of them. Getting to his feet hurt like a bitch, but Jason used the wall to push himself upright once he was uncuffed, and accepted his weapons when Ollie handed them to him. His All-Blades were still at his back, of course, but that hadn’t mattered when he hadn’t had a hand free to draw them with.

As he slid the last knife into place, he looked up to see Jade settling Lian into some kind of makeshift baby sling that left her hands free. He wondered for a second where the black-and-gold fabric had come from until he realized that Damian was no longer wearing a cape, and turned away, biting back a smile. Damian would never forgive him for noticing, but Alfred and Dick were definitely hearing about this if they made it out alive.

“We’re not leaving without Roy,” he said, turning back to the others.

“Damn right we’re not,” Ollie agreed, and looked at Tommy. “Where is he?”

Tommy sighed. “You might want to think about cutting your losses and getting out of here with Lian.”

“I might, but I won’t,” Ollie said. “Where is he?”

“He’s broken,” Tommy said. “It doesn’t matter how many pretty speeches you make. You can’t talk him back to life. He’s _broken_.”

“Maybe,” Jason said. “But there’s something here that fixes broken people. It fixed me.”

“That might be overstating the case,” Damian drawled, then tilted his head in acknowledgement. “But you do have a point. The question is, how do we get him into the Pit?”

“We drag him,” Ollie said. “Come on, there’s seven of us.”

“Are you counting the baby? Because I’m out,” Tommy said, then sighed at the look on Ollie’s face. “Look, I don’t know where my father and Harper are. I was supposed to be taking Lian to the nursery. Harper’s not allowed upstairs, because Dad didn’t exactly get permission to resurrect him and he doesn’t want Ra’s to spot him.”

“But he’s not worried about Ra’s asking questions about a random baby?” Dinah asked.

“Do you think Ra’s al Ghul spends a lot of time in the nursery?” Tommy replied. Damian snorted. “Anyway, Harper could be anywhere down here, and Dad could be anywhere, period. Sorry.”

“Tommy,” Ollie said. “Come with us.”

Tommy shook his head. “Can’t,” he said. “That’s done. But you get that baby home, okay, Ollie?” His smile was faint and worse than a frown. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

He was gone before Ollie could respond. Dinah put a comforting hand on Ollie’s arm.

“...Right,” Ollie said, a little more gruffly than usual. “I guess we’ll check the armory again. Baby Bat, you’re leading; Todd, you’re sitting this one out.”

“Excuse you?” Jason asked.

“Can you even stand up straight right now?” Ollie asked. “What is it, broken rib?”

Jason glared at him. “I already have a shitty vigilante billionaire dad, you know. I don’t need you trying it on.”

“Oh, I know you do,” Ollie said. “That’s how I know where you got the ‘stubbornly fight through injuries until you fall over’ thing from. You’re in the back, kid, deal with it.” He glanced at Dinah. “Does Cheshire stay in the back too or can she fight holding a baby?”

“Why are you asking me?” Dinah asked.

“Because I’ll get yelled at if I make a decision!”

“Why not ask _me?_ ” Jade asked.

“Because you’re a supervillain!”

“This conversation is preposterous,” Damian said, pushing past them and opening the doors. “Let’s go before Merlyn returns—or worse, my grandfather. Cheshire—”

“I’m taking Lian to the car,” she said. “I’ll give you a half an hour, and after that you’ll have to find your own way out of Switzerland.” She met Jason’s eyes. “I don’t want to leave Roy. But we agreed…”

“Lian’s the important thing.” Jason bit his lip. He wasn’t leaving Roy. He _wouldn’t_ leave Roy. He was getting Roy’s daughter to safety, and then… “There’s a back exit that doesn’t go through the house. I’ll cover Jade until she’s out and then come meet you. Keep your comms on, Robin.”

“I’m not the one who forgot he was wearing them,” Damian retorted.

They parted outside the door, Jason and Jade slipping silently toward the exit, the others moving back toward the armory. Jason didn’t speak, and Jade seemed content to be silent, too.

At least, until she said: “You two really weren’t sleeping together?”

Jason fumbled a step. “What?”

She shrugged. “It’s _Roy_. He sleeps with everyone. And you always practically pissed in a circle around him whenever I was around.”

“Maybe I just don’t fucking like you.”

“Mutual, Hood.” Jade smoothed a hand over Lian’s hair, just barely poking out from the sling. “But the way he was about you…”

Jason swallowed. “What do you mean?”

“You really want to do this now?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “The middle school gossip thing?”

“No,” Jason said. “I want to get Roy and get the hell out of here. You’re the one who brought it up.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. All I’m saying is that I cared for Roy, and I believe he cared for me. But Roy cares for a lot of people, you know? He’s good like that.”

“Yeah.” Jason did know. Jason had never really questioned if Roy loved him in the broader, more platonic sense. Roy loved so _easily_. Even when the person he was loving was prickly and unworthy.

“The way he talked about you, though...I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you were the only one he responded to, back there.” Jade shrugged. “Maybe that’s why I don’t like you.”

Jason swallowed around something lodged in his throat. “Hey, come on,” he said. His voice wavered embarrassingly, and for once, Jade didn’t zero in on the blood in the water. “It could be because of my sparkling personality.”

She exhaled a little harder through her nose; it wasn’t a laugh, but it wasn’t not one either. “Good point.”

The tunnels beneath the chalet were a labyrinth. Jason wasn’t sure if that was because it had simply been the easiest way to hollow them out, however many centuries ago Ra’s had done so, or because Ra’s was an asshole who liked to make things difficult for no reason. Maybe both.

Either way, Jason paused at a branching of paths for a moment, unsure of which fork to take. Jade gave him a look. “Thought you were programmed with a map of this place or something,” she said.

“Not exactly.” He frowned. “They must not have taken me this way very often. What about you? You were actually fully conscious the whole time you were a member of the League.”

She shrugged, one hand under Lian so the movement didn’t jostle her too much. “I usually went out through the house.”

“Fuck. Okay.” Jason tried to think. “We go right.”

“Are you sure?”

No. “Yes.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, but followed when he took the right fork. Sure enough, there was a door up ahead that looked familiar. Jason pushed it open, expecting a blast of Alpine air and blinding sunlight.

Instead he saw Malcolm Merlyn, lounging on a divan like something out of a Romantic poet’s worst opium-fueled nightmares, and holding out a hand for the cup of tea Roy was obediently pouring him out of a silver pot.

The only good thing about it was that Roy actually _startled_ at the sight of them, splashing tea over Malcolm’s hand. Malcolm let out a pained cry as he jolted upright.

“How the _hell_ did you two—Roy! Kill him!” he shouted, pointing at Jason. “I’ll take care of Cheshire.”

Jason saw Roy’s arm come back for a wind-up and threw himself in front of Jade and Lian as he yanked the door closed. A split second later, he heard the teapot clang against it.

“Come on!” he said, running back the way they’d come. Shit, shit, shit. Luckily the fork was only a few yards. “Take the other path, _quietly_ , and get out of here. I’ll lead him back to the Pit.”

“You’re not gonna make it, you’re all beat to hell,” she panted, holding Lian close to keep her from being flung around in the sling.

“Get Lian out of here” was all he said. He could hear the door opening behind them.

She cursed, then darted down the left fork. Jason slowed, making sure Roy got a good look at him. Would Roy really kill him if he caught him? Or would he spare him like he had before? Jason didn’t have time to worry about it.

“What do you think, Speedy?” he asked. “Can you keep up with me?”

It was a dumb line, but it worked—Roy came after him, so fast Jason wondered stupidly for a second if being killed by a speedster had some kind of post-resurrection effect. He stumbled into a run, back out of the tunnels towards the central hub of the complex, reaching up to tap his communicator.

“Found Roy,” he gasped. “Heading for the Pit.”

“What—you were supposed to get _out_ , not go looking for him, you lovesick idiot!” Damian said.

“Wasn’t exactly on purpose,” Jason snapped, and ignored the rest of it. “Get him the rest of the way if I don’t make it.”

“Jason, hold on, this is crazy. We can figure out something else.”

That was Dinah, but Jason didn’t have the breath to spare on another response. His broken rib had shifted badly and stabbed into him with every step, but he forced himself forward, pounding along the stone floor. At least he wasn’t confused about where to go anymore. He might have been uncertain about the exit, but he knew where the Pit was.

Even in his dreams, he knew where the Pit was.

The stench of sulfur grew stronger as he ran. He could hear Roy’s footsteps behind him, louder as they closed the distance, more steady than his own limping ones; he could hear Roy’s breathing, heavy but not ragged like his own. He couldn’t stay out of reach for long. Roy had always been the faster of the two of them; Jason was stronger, but Roy had that lean build and those long legs, was built for speed and not destruction. He’d always been able to catch up to Jason. Or maybe Jason had just wanted to be caught.

He felt fingers brush his back, shivered and twisted out of reach, put on an extra burst of speed even though his ribs screamed at him. The door to the Pit was right _there_ , and he slammed it open, raced back into his nightmares because maybe it wouldn’t save Roy but maybe it _would_.

The Pit was housed in a vast chamber, three stories high at least, with the stinking green water roiling and steaming at the bottom, and galleries carved in rows along the walls so that Ra’s followers could watch him luxuriate in his own sacrileges on a regular basis. There was a narrow staircase winding down the wall with no railing, uncoiling like a snake until it reached the bottom, and then a steep drop off into the Pit several feet below. There were more stairs leading into the water somewhere, Jason knew. He hadn’t taken them. He’d been pushed.

Jason half-ran and half-stumbled down the stairs, clinging to the wall so that he didn’t plummet into empty space, Roy close on his heels. He fell down the last few, screaming as the pain in his ribs made his vision white out for a second.

When he could see again, Roy was looming over him, and Jason braced himself—

But Roy hesitated.

He _hesitated_ , and Jason grabbed onto his collar and hauled himself up to his knees again, clung to him through the pain and said: “No. Don’t you fucking dare. We’re not _doing_ this again, Roy. I know you can hear me, all right? I know.”

And Roy said: “ _Jay_.”

Said it like it was being ripped from him, like Jason had reached into his chest and _clawed_ it out, even though Jason was the one bleeding. He looked _lost_ , and Jason tightened his fists like he never expected to open them again.

“Come back to me,” he said. “Come _back_.”

“Jason,” Roy said, broken. His face crumpled. “It hurts.”

“What does?” Jason asked, releasing his grip with one hand to run his palm over Roy’s torso like he could find any injuries that way, like there would be anything he could do about them if he could.

“Coming back.” Roy’s brow knotted. “You’re so far away. And it’s...it _hurts_.”

And Jason understood, suddenly, what Roy was saying, even if he wasn’t saying it clearly at all. Because it hadn’t hurt to come back to life, had it? It had only hurt to come out of the Pit.

“Yeah, well, tough shit,” he said, and Roy blinked, slow and startled. “Breaking news: life hurts. Yeah. It fucking _sucks_ , and people leave you, and they disappoint you, and they tell you you’ve disappointed them.” He palmed the scar on his throat with his free hand. “You think I never wished I hadn’t come back? You think I don’t know it would be _easier_ to have stayed in my grave?”

Roy let out a soft noise—agreement or protest, Jason wasn’t sure. “But I wouldn’t, if I had a choice. If I could do it again,” Jason said. “I would come back, every time, because if I hadn’t come back I would never have found you.”

He would never have befriended Kori, either—or Tim, and wasn’t _that_ a fucking kick in the head, that the boy who had replaced him after he died was one of the reasons he didn’t mind being alive? He would never have seen Damian’s secret, furtive kindnesses or leaned on Cass’s quiet strength or known Dick as something like an equal and not a distant, unachievable ideal. He wouldn’t have Talia’s unspoken support helping him stand when his spine wasn’t up to it. Even Bruce...as hard as things were with him, as much pain as that relationship had caused, there were moments with Bruce since he’d come back that he wouldn’t give up. Not for anything.

And there was Roy. Always, indelibly carved on Jason’s heart, there was Roy.

And that was why Jason couldn’t make this decision for him.

“I’ll take you away,” he said. “If you want. Merlyn will never touch you again. I’ll take you…” He swallowed. “I’ll take you to the island. We can let the spell run out. I won’t give you the serum again. I’ll bury you there, if that’s what you want.”

He curved his hands around the back of Roy’s neck, felt the heat and strength of him through his gloves. “Or you can come back to the family and friends who love you. You can remember that you’re Roy fucking Harper, the strongest man I know, and that you’ve beaten your demons before. You can be a goddamn father to your daughter.” His eyes stung. His cheeks were wet. “You can come back to _me_ , and let me spend my life trying to make it worth your while. All you have to do is step into the Pit. But I’m not going to force you. All I’m going to do is say please.”

He kissed Roy’s forehead, the faded freckles and the anguished lines. “ _Please_ , Roy.”

He let go.

Roy stared at him for a long moment, and Jason waited. Waited for Roy to say it was too much, it was too hard, to ask Jason to take him away to die again. To _watch_ , this time.

Suddenly the ghost of a smile flickered over Roy’s face. It was the most he’d looked like himself since Jason had unmasked him.

“All right,” he said. “See you soon, Jaybird.” And he stood up and stepped off the ledge, into the water.

Jason sagged like all his tendons had been cut, his heart hammering. He’d done it. Roy had chosen to live, to _heal_ , to come _back_. It was going to be okay. It was all going to be okay.

The water roiled in front of him as it did its work, the sickly, livid green of his nightmares. Roy’s head broke the surface.

And then Jason remembered the Pit madness.

“Shit!” he said, trying to scramble backwards and gasping with pain as his broken rib stabbed into something important. “Shit, shit, shit!”

Roy climbed steadily out of the water—so that was where the stairs were—streaming wet and as predatory as a cat. His eyes were lost and mad, lit from within with the same otherworldly, _wrong_ glow of the Pit. His hands were curved into claws. He was a walking chthonic nightmare of impossibly perfect health and strength and power, and Jason was already shattered, and Roy was going to _kill him_ and wake to see what he’d done and Jason had brought him here, Jason had talked him into the thing that was going to break him—

_Shunk!_

An arrow sprouted from Roy’s shoulder. He gave it a wild, surprised look, then toppled to the ground in a heap.

Jason turned to see Ollie standing on the stairs above him, holding his bow. Dinah, Connor, and Damian were packed in behind him.

“Tranq arrow,” Ollie said. “I told you I brought the arrows I needed.”

Jason sagged again. The others made it the rest of the way down the stairs, and Ollie knelt to pull the arrow out of Roy’s shoulder. It had a small, smooth head that came out easily, and the Lazarus Pit must have still been working its magic, because Jason was close enough to see the pea-sized, round wound that it left behind close itself up.

“You think he’ll be himself when he wakes up?” Ollie asked, looking down at Roy.

There was no way to know for sure. But Jason remembered the faint smile Roy had given him before he went into the Pit. “Yes,” he said firmly.

“You were a real idiot trying to take him on by yourself, you know that?” Ollie asked, looking at him. His expression softened. “Thank you.”

“You were supposed to leave with Cheshire,” Damian said, giving Jason a stern look that reminded Jason of Alfred, of all people. “Why didn’t you?”

Jason opened his mouth, about to protest at being scolded, when he realized why Damian was giving him a harder time than Ollie. Damian didn’t particularly care about Roy; he’d wanted _Jason_ to be safe. Jason wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“We took a wrong turn,” he said. “That’s what happens when the guide doesn’t actually remember being here. Ran into Roy and Merlyn. Drew Roy off so Jade could get out.”

Dinah held out her hands and helped Jason to his feet, then let him slump against her with a groan. “Well, we should go catch up with her before she drives off. If she said she would, she definitely will.”

Ollie and Connor were hauling Roy upright, supporting his weight between them. “Yeah, let’s go,” Ollie said. “I have something that’ll wake him up, but we don’t know what state he’ll be in when he comes out of it, so we should make tracks before ol’ Ghulypants figures out that we’re—”

“Trespassing?” said a voice from above them, one that shivered down Jason’s spine in a worryingly familiar way.

Shit.

He looked up. Ra’s al Ghul stood at the top of the steps, his hands clasped behind his back. His Ghuls were fanning out behind him, filling the galleries that circled the chamber. All of them carried bows and had arrows nocked to the strings. And League archers were _good_. They weren’t as good as the archers next to Jason, but with Ollie and Connor’s hands full of Roy and Roy unconscious, that didn’t matter.

“My unruly grandson,” Ra’s said. “My daughter’s favorite abomination. My former fiancee. And...others.” He waved a careless hand at the Queen men before tucking it behind him again. “Explain yourselves.”

“Fiancee?” Jason echoed before he could help himself, glancing at Dinah.

She rolled her eyes. “Ugh. It was a long time ago, I wasn’t making good decisions.”

Ollie snorted. “And yet everyone always thinks I’m the worst person she’s ever dated.”

“Oliver, honey? Shut up.”

“My house is in disarray,” Ra’s said. “My loyal followers have been attacked, and _former_ followers think they have the right to return to a place they turned their back on.”

He must have given some signal, because two more Ghuls entered the chamber, pulling Jade with them, Lian still in the sling. Two more followed, dragging Malcolm Merlyn; his eyes were open, but his head was lolling oddly.

“Not as loyal as you think,” Jade said, trying to jerk away from the assassins who held her. “He’s lucky I didn’t have time to kill him slowly for what he did. And the paralysis will wear off.” She smiled. “It’ll hurt, though.”

Damian stepped forward. “Grandfather, I apologize on behalf of myself and my companions for this intrusion into your sanctum,” he said, his voice carrying across the vast room. “I regret to inform you that Malcolm Merlyn was pursuing his own agenda with your resources. He took something that belongs to my brother,” he indicated Roy and then Jason with a wave of his hand, “and we are merely retrieving it. Or would you rather have me, a descendant of your line, overlook such an affront to my family?”

“Would you have _me_ overlook this disrespect for my boundaries?” Ra’s replied. “You know the punishment for trespassing. You carried it out yourself, many times.”

“I would have you demonstrate the wisdom I know my honored grandfather to possess,” Damian said, and Jason bit back a laugh. The kid was laying it on thick. He’d never gotten that kind of diplomacy from Bruce, who was too much like Jason, ready to break before he bent; he must be channeling Talia, or maybe Alfred. “It is your right to execute us—”

“Like hell it is!” Ollie exclaimed.

“—but you know it will bring my father to your door. You know it will bring the _Justice League_ to your door,” Damian said, ignoring Ollie. “Are you ready for a war now? Or would you rather choose the battlefield?”

“Even Batman always says you have your own code of honor,” Jason said, jumping in. “It was _your_ follower who kidnapped my,” he fumbled for the right word, “partner and his daughter in a bid for power. Who used _your_ arcane knowledge and _your_ Ghuls to do so. Sure, we trespassed, but we also exposed a threat in your organization. Who’s to say he wouldn’t have turned on you once he’d gotten what he wanted from us? I’d say we’re about even.”

It was hard to tell from this distance, but he was pretty sure Malcolm was glaring at him. If Ra’s bought this line, Jason might have just signed Malcolm’s death warrant. He couldn’t bring himself to be too upset over that. Sure, without Malcolm, Jason would never have gotten Roy back, but he would never forgive him for what he’d put Roy through in the process.

None of them mentioned Tommy. Jason hoped he’d gotten out.

Ra’s was silent for a long moment. Jason wondered if it was worth it to try for his guns. Maybe if he popped the old bastard in the forehead he’d die before they could get him in the Pit, and then Jason wouldn’t mind so much that they’d all be arrow pincushions ten seconds later.

“I’m pleased to see that your time with the Detective has not dulled your wit, Damian,” Ra’s said finally. “And I would not have it said that the Demon’s Head does not pay his debts.” He inclined his head. “Come upstairs. Refresh yourselves. I will deal with the traitor myself.”

“Well, what do you know?” Ollie muttered so that only those of them close to the Pit could hear. “Ol’ Ghulypants has a heart after all.” He glanced at Dinah. “You still like me best, though, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Canon: JUSTICE FOR TOMMY MERYLYN!!! Yes, I'm still mad about the Season 1 finale of _Arrow_ , why do you ask?
> 
> And yes, Dinah was briefly engaged to Ra's. It was pretty funny.


	8. Chapter 8

In the chalet upstairs, they were given extremely temporary guest rooms—one for the Bats, one for the Arrows, and one for Jade and Lian. Jason didn’t trust Ra’s al Ghul’s hospitality to last past the point that his grandson’s eloquence stopped seeming like an entertaining novelty, and Damian agreed that they should patch themselves up, wake Roy, and scram.

Still, it was a relief to wash his face; to partake of the strong, sweet Turkish coffee and ludicrously elaborate spread of food the staff brought them; to just fucking _sit_ for a minute. Damian helped him clean the wound on his back—it didn’t need stitches, thankfully, just a few butterflies and a bandage—and taped his ribs.

“You’re good at that,” Jason said as Damian packed up the first aid kit and Jason eased reluctantly back into his own filthy, torn shirt. Better than Jason had been at that age, but then, Jason had only started learning proper first aid when he was twelve. Damian had had to learn it practically from birth.

Sort of fucked up that _either_ of them had had to learn it, really. Maybe Lian would have a different kind of childhood. Jason hoped so.

Damian shrugged. “It would be foolish not to be.”

“Yeah,” Jason said, and paused, then pushed forward. It was hardly the most difficult thing he’d had to say today. “Listen...thanks. For this, but also, you know. For coming. For talking Ra’s down. All of it.”

Damian drew himself up even more stiffly, which was impressive considering how rigid he usually was. “Red Arrow is my teammate. If there is a threat to her, it’s my responsibility to remove it.”

Jason bit the inside of his cheek and didn’t push. He could give Damian this out. “Sure,” he said.

It was Damian’s turn to hesitate. “You aren’t...in Gotham very often,” he said. “And when you are, you don’t stay at the Manor. It was probably...useful for us to work together on this mission. It will improve our strategic teamwork in the future.”

Jason wasn’t as fluent in Damian-speak as Dick or Alfred, but he was pretty sure that was Damian’s way of asking if they could hang out more. He hid his surprise. “You’re right,” he said. “We should probably, uh, work together more when my best friend hasn’t been unwillingly resurrected and turned against his family.”

Damian nodded curtly and scowled in the direction of the coffee pot, clearly uncomfortable with even this mutually pathetic attempt at a brotherly heart-to-heart. “Harper. He is...that is, I hope he is himself again when he wakes up. For you.”

Jason blinked rapidly. “Yeah. Thanks,” he said, and then he was scowling at the coffee pot too because if he looked at Damian’s little face he would absolutely lose it.

God, did Bruce know how to raise kids or what?

He had less than a moment to collect himself before there was a soft knock on the door. It opened and Dinah poked her head in. “Hey,” she said. “Ollie’s going to bring Roy out of it now. I think he’d like you to be there.”

Jason knew she didn’t mean Ollie. “Thanks,” he said, and stood up with a muffled groan. He felt better with his injuries seen to—and after taking some extra-strength painkillers—but he’d be hurting for weeks.

He followed Dinah into the room next door, Damian trailing behind with a determined look on his face that told Jason that if Roy _wasn’t_ in his right mind when he woke up, at least one of them was ready and willing to put him right back down again. It was probably for the best, but Jason couldn’t think about it. Couldn’t consider the possibility that he might lose Roy _again_ , so quickly.

Roy was sprawled on the bed. Even unconscious, his face looked more like Jason was used to seeing it—soft and relaxed, not blank. How many times had Jason seen him like this, when they’d shared hotel rooms and tiny safe houses on the road? How many times had he studied his face when he was free to look his fill, memorizing the constellations of his freckles like he could read the future in them?

In retrospect, he probably should have figured out that he was in love with Roy sooner.

Ollie was seated at the edge of the bed, holding something that looked not unlike an epipen. Bruce carried something similar in his utility belt, and so had Jason, once. Connor knelt on the other side of Roy, clearly ready to pin his shoulders down if necessary. Jade stood as far from the bed as possible, holding Lian, and al Ghul hospitality must have extended to providing baby supplies from _somewhere_ , because Lian was going to town on a bottle, cheerfully oblivious to the tension in the room.

Dinah took a position between Roy and Jade, and nodded at Ollie. “Go ahead,” she said. “Wake our boy up.”

Ollie nodded back, then jabbed the needle into Roy’s thigh. There was a beat, and then Roy convulsed, sucking in air as his eyes flew open.

“Jay!” he gasped, and Jason’s heart seized.

Roy’s gaze darted wildly around the room until it landed on Ollie’s face. “Jason! Jay, I—Ollie? Ollie, where’s Jason, I _hurt_ him, I need to—”

“Hey, hey, shhh, fella, it’s okay,” Ollie said, somehow managing to smile and look like he wanted to cry at the same time. “Jeez, way to make a guy feel like second best. Todd’s right here. He’s okay.”

Jason stepped forward, feeling suddenly and unaccountably shy. “Hey, buddy.”

“Jason.” Roy’s face crumpled. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

“Hey, no, it’s okay, it wasn’t your fault.” The hesitation vanished; Jason rushed to the bed and sat down as Ollie moved out of the way. Roy pushed himself up into a seated position and Jason put his hands on Roy’s shoulders, his sides, as if he could help, even though all of Roy’s wounds from this battle would be mental. Or maybe he just wanted to touch Roy. “You weren’t yourself. You think I give a shit about a broken rib or two? You came _back_. That’s all I care about.”

“I’m sorry,” Roy said again. His eyes were watery. “It was like I could see everything, I knew who I was and what I was doing, but I didn’t _care_. Nothing _meant_ anything, and it was...it was easy, because that meant nothing hurt, either. But you...fuck, Jason, looking at you still hurt, every time.”

That was a pain worse than the broken rib. “Sorry,” Jason gulped.

“Jay, _no_.” Roy hauled him in, until Jason’s forehead touched his, and Jason closed his eyes. “Don’t you dare be sorry. It saved me. _You_ saved me. I—shit, Cissie! I hurt Cissie, is she okay?”

He pulled back again and Jason followed, not wanting to let go. “Yeah, yeah, she’s okay. You just punctured her shoulder, she’ll heal. She knows you didn’t mean it.”

Roy’s forehead dropped to Jason’s shoulder. “Fuck, and I attacked _Emi_ , I…” He paused, then looked back up at Jason’s face. “Did you say something about my _daughter?_ ”

“Yeah,” Jason said, mustering up a smile. “Yeah, I did.”

He glanced over his shoulder at Jade, who was already approaching the bed. Jason stood to give her his place; he thought he felt Roy’s hands cling to him for a second before Roy’s gaze dropped to Lian and he let go.

“Jade,” he breathed, looking at her and then back down at Lian, who had finished her bottle and was staring at him with wide, curious eyes. “How...when…”

“The last time,” she said, sitting down in the spot where Jason had been. “Before you went into Sanctuary. You’ve been gone a year, Roy. She’s three months old.” She smiled. “Her name is Lian.”

“Lian,” Roy repeated. Jason had never heard so much wonder on his lips. “Can I…?”

He held out his arms tentatively, and Jade passed Lian over to him. He traced her round cheek with a finger, touched her fine hair, and even a few feet from the bed Jason could see his hand was shaking.

Lian gave him a wet, gummy smile and seized his finger in her tiny fist. Roy let out a choked noise.

“Hi, Lian,” he said. “I’m your daddy. I’m sorry I got here so late.”

Lian gurgled in response.

“She looks like you,” Roy said. When he looked up at Jade, Jason could see the sheen of tears in his eyes. “She’s beautiful.”

Jason felt a light touch on his shoulder and turned to see Dinah, who nodded in the direction of the door. Right. This wasn’t something they all needed to hang around and witness. This moment should just be for Lian’s parents.

They all slipped out of the room, and Connor closed the door gently behind them—at which point Dinah promptly burst into tears and buried her face in Ollie’s chest.

“Hey, shhh,” he said, sounding both unsurprised and softer than Jason had ever heard him, wrapping his arms around her. “It’s okay. We got him back, pretty bird.”

He bent his face to her hair, and Jason wasn’t sure whether it was to comfort her or hide his expression until he saw the way Connor was bracing himself against the wall, one hand over his own face. Like father, like son, Jason supposed. Damian looked profoundly uncomfortable and very much like his own father at the sight of all this raw emotion.

And Jason…

Jason knew he was fundamentally a selfish person. He always had been, especially when it came to Roy. So the wounded howling in his chest wasn’t a surprise, really. He should have seen it coming the moment he knew there was a possibility they could bring Roy back.

After all, Lian deserved to be with both of her parents.

The important thing was that Roy was _back_. Jason would steal away the scraps of him that he could, as usual; he’d always had light fingers. And if he couldn’t quite be satisfied with that, well, he’d never expected to live a life of satisfaction in the first place.

It would be enough.

*

They were still standing awkwardly in the hall when Ra’s swept towards them, trailed by half a dozen servants.

“Good. You’re clean,” he said, glanced at Jason, and added, “...Somewhat. I believe I have more than paid whatever debts I might have owed you for ferreting out a potential traitor.”

“What are you going to do with Merlyn?” Ollie asked.

Ra’s gave him a flat look. “That information is _not_ part of what I owe you, archer,” he said. He held out a hand to Dinah; she offered hers warily and he brushed a kiss against her knuckles, making Ollie puff out like an angry porcupine. “Dinah, it was lovely to see you again. Damian, collect your rabble and go deal with the situation outside before I decide to.”

“Wait, what situation outside?” Jason asked, but Ra’s was already walking away.

“Get Harper,” Damian said. “When he says go, he means now.”

Wary of what he might see, Jason let Dinah be the one to knock on the door and interrupt Roy and Jade. Roy moved easily when he got out of the bed, with no trace that he’d been dead for over a year, but Jason was still hobbling like an old man despite the tape on his ribs. Even so, he was a little surprised when Roy came up beside him and tucked his shoulder under Jason’s armpit, offering support.

“Just like old times, huh?” he asked, beaming into Jason’s face from far too close.

Jason turned away after a beat too long, too many endless seconds of re-memorizing that familiar smile. At least Roy still stank of the Pit, of sulphur and rot; a smiling Roy who smelled like himself would have been too much to bear. “Thanks,” he mumbled.

“Hey, I’m the one who broke you, I should at least be the one to help you out.”

Thankfully they were moving by then, and Jason could pretend he was concentrating on getting down the stairs instead of the solid warmth of Roy pressed up against him. They all followed Damian down two flights, through a long hallway, and out the front door—

—and stopped, dumbfounded, at the sight before them.

“Holy shit,” Roy said, and then, “Crap. Lian, pretend you didn’t hear that.”

The ground and sky in front of the chalet were packed with superheroes, a riot of muscles and weapons and primary colors. Jason started to count and almost immediately gave up, but there were definitely at least several dozen Titans and a fair number of Leaguers. He made out Superman and Supergirl and one of the Superboys; the Hawks, circling slowly because their wings wouldn’t let them hover; red blurs that meant impatient speedsters. Kyle wasn’t there, as promised, but Jason spotted every other Green Lantern he knew of. Even Bruce was there.

“Wow,” Roy said. “Batman really turned ‘em out for you and the kid, huh?”

Jason forgot himself and turned to stare at him. “You think this is for _us?_ ”

Roy gave him a puzzled look.

“They’re for _you_ , dumbass. You think Hawkgirl gives two shits about me? You think fucking _Damage_ even knows who I am? I don’t know if Dick did it or Kyle, but—Roy, this is for you. They came for _you_.”

Roy blinked at him, and Jason almost wanted to laugh, because after all this, did he still not get it? Did he still not understand how loved he was?

“Look,” he said. “Look who’s in the front.”

He nodded to Dick and Donna and Kori and Tempest, all racing to be first to greet Roy. Kori and Donna were the fastest, obviously, sweeping Roy off his feet in a hug that was all stars and sparkles and glowing hair. Tempest wasn’t far behind, but Dick paused and caught Jason as he staggered without Roy’s support.

“He’s really back,” Dick said. Jason couldn’t see his eyes behind the whiteout lenses of his mask, but he could hear the tears in Dick’s voice.

“Yeah,” Jason said, trying for gruff and missing by a mile.

“I know you told us not to come, but…it’s _Roy_. Would you have stayed home if I told you to?”

Jason scoffed. “I would have kicked your teeth in.”

“Yeah,” Dick said fondly, the big idiot, and then held him at arm’s length. “Are _you_ okay? You look like crap.”

Jason looked back to where Roy was now being lifted off the ground in a hug from Cyborg, while a green labrador retriever barked and wagged its tail furiously.

“I will be,” he said.

They couldn’t exactly set up a receiving line for everyone to welcome Roy back, considering that he quickly started to look exhausted and overwhelmed, and also because at any second Ra’s might get fed up and drop a nuke on their heads. Cyborg and Zatanna set up portals and started ferrying people through them to the Watchtower, Titans Tower, and various home cities.

Jason knew that Bruce was standing next to him before he turned around. “I didn’t even think you liked Roy,” he said. “Not serious enough.”

“He’s not serious enough for Gotham,” Bruce said. “Not everywhere is Gotham.”

They watched as Roy hugged Hal Jordan while Impulse ran excited circles around them. Bruce was right. _Jason_ belonged in Gotham, with its gray skies and endless winters. Roy belonged somewhere brighter. Somewhere with his daughter.

“It concerned me, when Dick first formed the Titans,” Bruce went on. “I thought they would be a distraction. But they were good for him. His friendship with _Roy_ was good for him.” He paused. “Roy’s been good for you, too.”

It wasn’t a question, exactly, but there _was_ a question in there. Jason still didn’t look at Bruce. He wasn’t entirely sure they were talking about the same thing; either way, it wasn’t exactly something he’d ever discussed with the old man.

“It has to go both ways,” he said. “I have to be good for _him_.”

“Jason,” Bruce said, and Jason finally turned to look at him. He was as impassive as ever, face mostly hidden by the cowl, but Jason had been reading through that since he was twelve. “Of _course_ you are.”

Zatanna saved Jason from having to come up with a response. “Okay, this one’s going to Gotham!” she called out, opening another portal. “All aboard, you weirdos!”

Dick let go of Roy and headed for the portal; so did Damian, and Jason spotted Tim and Helena moving through the crowd too. “Uh, there may or may not be a Batplane in the League of Assassins airfield,” he told Bruce as they started walking. “You might want to ask Zatanna to send it back to the cave. Or have Replacement fly it home, whatever.”

“Jason?”

Jason turned to see Roy looking confused and unhappy. “You’re leaving?” he asked.

“Oh,” Jason said. “I just...I mean, there’s so many people here, I didn’t want to…”

Bruce put a hand on his shoulder. “Go to Star City,” he said. “I’ll take care of the plane.”

Jason bit his lip. “Guess I’m coming to Star City,” he said, and looking at Roy’s bright smile only hurt a little.

*

Back in Star City there were more happy reunions, as Ollie’s various teenage girls—and Kyle—flung themselves at Roy while he stammered out apologies. Jade, who Ollie seemed to have given up on keeping out of his house, eventually distracted them with the baby, and Jason slunk out into the backyard while everyone, including Roy, cooed over Lian.

Well, not everyone. Cass came up silently beside him and leaned against the porch railing, eyeing his injuries with an unimpressed expression.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Sisters are...nice,” she said. “You?”

Jason took his time lighting a cigarette so that he didn’t have to answer right away. He should be all right. He _was_ all right. Roy was back, and the joy he felt over that was still too big and bright to touch or even understand. But he still felt...unfinished, somehow, like something was missing.

He still felt like he was standing outside, alone, in the cold.

“Yeah,” he said, and then, because lying to Cass never worked, “I will be.” Then he winced. “Shit, you probably want to get home, right? Roy wants me to stay for...I don’t know why, but we can get you on a commercial flight back to Gotham…”

She touched his wrist. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Rest first.”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Rest first.”

Sunset in Switzerland wasn’t even noon in Star City, but Jason couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, not counting being chained to a wall while unconscious. At some point he drifted back into the house and Dinah got a good look at his face.

“Oh boy,” she said, and snagged his wrist, more firmly than Cass had. “Bedtime for Jason.”

“No,” he protested weakly, even as he let her tow him up the stairs and into a guest room. “I can…”

“We did it, kid,” she said. “We beat the bad guy. This is the part where we rest.”

“I’m,” he said, rubbed his eye, and forgot the rest of his sentence.

Her smile was gentle. “Yeah,” she said. “I think the rest of us are going to be passing out in a few minutes, at least the Switzerland crew. Roy always takes the room next door, so he’ll be there if you need anything.”

Jason’s face twisted as he fought not to ask if they were putting Jade in there, too. Roy wasn’t a teenager who had to keep his bedroom door open if he had a girl over, and anyway, it wasn’t any of Jason’s business. “...Thanks,” he managed finally.

Dinah smiled again. “Thanks for bringing him back.”

The guest bedroom had a double bed that Jason already knew his feet would hang off the edge of and a weird painting of Robin Hood on the wall and not much else. Jason managed to strip down to his underwear before crawling into the bed. He thought vaguely that he should close the curtains, since it was nearly midday, but was asleep before he could even make an attempt.

*

When he woke up, the angle of the light had changed in a way that he couldn’t figure out until he realized it was early morning and he’d slept for about nineteen hours. He felt considerably less dead on his feet, but ravenous and sorely in need of more painkillers.

After using the bathroom, splashing water on his face and swishing toothpaste around his mouth until it tasted less like something had died in it, he went back to his room, carefully averting his gaze from Roy’s closed door, and pulled on his pants. He didn’t bother with trying to get his filthy shirt on over his taped ribs, but he probably shouldn’t walk around in his underwear when there were this many teenage girls in the house.

He padded barefoot down the stairs, hoping no one got pissed at him for rummaging through the fridge for something to eat like a feral raccoon. When he reached the kitchen, though, he froze at the sight of Roy, wearing a faded old pair of pajama pants and nothing else and brewing a pot of coffee.

Roy turned and his face lit up with a smile. “Morning, Jaybird,” he said, and Jason couldn’t help the little noise that escaped him at hearing that nickname again. At how _familiar_ it was to find Roy in the kitchen making coffee and smiling at him, how _normal_ , as if he’d never pushed Roy away, sent him off to die alone and afraid and _hurting_ —

He didn’t realize he’d wobbled until Roy was steering him to a kitchen chair, saying words he couldn’t quite make out and gently pushing his head between his knees. Slowly, slowly the blood rushed back to where it should be and he was aware of Roy’s callused hand on his back, rubbing gently as he murmured.

“...that’s right, just breathe, Jay. You’re okay. Everything’s okay.”

Jason pulled himself upright with an effort and realized that his eyes were wet and blurry. Fuck, why was he always crying in this house? “You _died_ ,” he said, as if Roy didn’t know.

“Yeah,” Roy said, wrapping a hand over Jason’s, rubbing the back of it with his thumb. “But I came back.” He was squatting next to Jason’s chair, looking up at him, freckles on his nose and eyes exactly as bright as they should be. Jason had never been happier or more heartbroken.

Roy swayed towards him, and Jason made himself look away. He thought he saw Roy’s mouth twist downwards before he straightened up, bouncing lightly on the balls of his bare feet.

“Right!” he said. “Was it weird to do, like, mundane things when you came back? I was just standing here before you came down thinking, ‘I died, and now I’m making coffee.’”

“My experience was...a little different than yours,” Jason said, and Roy winced.

“Yeah,” he said. “Shit, I’m sorry. I wish…” He cut himself off.

“What?” Jason asked.

“It feels so selfish. It’s not about _me_ ,” Roy said. “And I barely knew you then. But I wish I had been there for you. To make it...easier.”

Jason had to pause to swallow past the lump in his throat. “You did,” he said. “When you...once we were...partners. You made it easier.”

Roy smiled at him again, unbearably soft. Jason knew he should look away, should change the subject, but he couldn’t seem to make himself do it. He just sat there, staring at Roy like a starving man locked out of a feast, until the coffeemaker beeped and made them both jump.

“Oh! The coffee’s ready,” Roy said, so at least Jason wasn’t the only one feeling too off-kilter to know what to say. “Is that why you came down? I didn’t ask.”

“Uh, no,” Jason said, wincing slightly. “Painkillers.”

Roy, who had been reaching into a cabinet for mugs, turned to face him, his face falling. “Because of me. _Shit_.”

“ _No_.” Jason was standing, across the kitchen and within arm’s reach of Roy before he realized it. “Because of Malcolm Merlyn. You didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Yeah, but I still did it.” Roy’s hand came up as if to cup Jason’s face and Jason went still...but then it moved higher, parting the curls above Jason’s left temple. “You’ve still got a bit of a goose egg here.”

Jason shrugged. “I’ve got a hard skull.”

Roy snorted and let his fingers trail lower, just barely ghosting around the curve of Jason’s ear and under his jaw to guide his chin up. Jason knew from looking in the mirror upstairs that the cut there was barely visible, just a thin red line where his blade had split his skin like lips parting in a kiss. He still trembled as Roy’s fingers traced along it.

“I’ve had worse,” he managed. The cut sat along an oblique angle to the scar left by Bruce’s batarang. This one, at least, wouldn’t leave a mark.

This one, at least, hadn’t been on purpose.

Roy’s face went so deeply sad at that that it was a relief when he dropped his gaze lower to the tape over Jason’s ribs—and then not a relief, when his fingers followed his gaze, feather-light over the edges of the bandage, and every nerve ending in Jason’s body lit up at once.

“If it helps, I think you just broke the one,” Jason said. It came out as barely more than a whisper.

“You weren’t fighting back hard enough,” Roy said. “You should have kicked my ass.”

Jason’s mouth quirked. “Give me a chance to heal up so we can spar, I’ll kick your ass all you want.”

It had been a bad joke before it left his mouth and it fell completely flat in the open air. Roy gracefully ignored it, following the line of the tape with his fingers as it wrapped around Jason’s side and towards his back. Jason lifted his arm so that Roy didn’t have to break the connection until he reached the end.

“This isn’t as deep as I thought it might be,” Roy said, and now he was touching the sword wound that sliced diagonally between Jason’s shoulder blades. Jason’s pulse throbbed, and he closed his eyes.

“Jacket. Kevlar,” he said.

“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure those swords were magic,” Roy said. Jason could feel his breath on his bare skin. Fuck, why hadn’t he put on a shirt? “They felt kinda tingly when I held them.”

There were no more wounds, nothing else for Roy to look at and hate himself over, but he was still standing there, lodged behind Jason’s beating heart. Those fingers went up, raking through the short curls at the back of Jason’s neck. “Jason…”

Jason stepped away, reluctantly turning to face Roy even though he knew his cheeks must be red. “Do you know where Ollie keeps the aspirin?”

Roy blinked. There was a flush along his cheekbones that hadn’t been there before. “Oh. Yeah, it’s...hang on.”

He opened a different cabinet and pulled out an economy-size bottle of aspirin. Jason swallowed three dry while Roy went back to the coffee. He poured two mugs, adding a single spoonful of sugar to the first and handing it to Jason before taking the half and half out of the fridge and doctoring his own. Jason watched him in silence, unsure if his eyes were stinging because Roy knew how he wanted his coffee without asking, or because he never thought he’d see Roy make his own truly heinously sweet, watered-down coffee again.

“Why are _you_ up?” he asked finally. “Your sleep schedule can’t be as fucked as the rest of ours. Or, well, actually, I don’t know, maybe it’s worse.”

“Oh,” Roy said, and the awkwardness and sadness that had been clinging to him vanished as he let his spoon clatter against the rim of his mug. “Well, Jade put Lian in with me and she got fussy about an hour ago, so I changed her diaper and then I couldn’t fall back asleep.” He beamed. “I changed my daughter’s _diaper_ , Jay. My _daughter_.”

Jason carefully didn’t react to the first part of that, the part where “Jade put Lian in with me” meant that _Jade_ wasn’t with Roy last night, though what that signified he didn’t know. But he smiled at the rest of it, and didn’t even have to force it. “Congrats, bud. From what I hear, there’s a lot more of that to look forward to.”

“Oh, it was horrifying,” Roy said. “But it was also like I just...she was crying, and I _fixed_ it. I made everything okay again. And then I held her and she went right to sleep and...she doesn’t even _know_ me yet, not really, but that’s my job. I’m the guy who makes everything okay for that little girl.” His expression was wondering. “I just stared at her for that whole hour after. She’s an entire _person_ and she’s so tiny and perfect and I don’t understand how any of that came out of me.” A little laugh. “She’s lucky she looks like Jade.”

“She looks like both of you,” Jason said, and when Roy opened his mouth, insisted, “She _does_. I can see it.” Roy visibly let it go, and Jason made himself ask the next question: “So what’s the plan with her?”

Roy frowned. “Well, it was getting close to breakfast time, so I brought her to Jade since, you know, my nipples don’t do that…”

“No, I mean…” Jason chewed the inside of his cheek and tried not to think about—or look at—Roy’s nipples. “Are you and Jade gonna stay in Star City? Or will you go to England?” He didn’t know why he was prodding at this. Both were impossibly far from Gotham. Jason was going to hurt either way.

“We’re still figuring it out,” Roy said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t really want to leave Star City, and Jade _definitely_ doesn’t want to live in the States, but that’s too far to shuttle Lian back and forth, especially once she starts school.”

It was Jason’s turn to frown. “What do you mean, back and forth?”

Roy gave him a confused look—and then the confusion gave way to delighted understanding, like when he figured out how to make a stubborn trick arrow work properly. “Jay. Did you think Jade and I were getting back together?”

Something leapt in Jason’s chest. “You’re not?”

“God, no,” Roy said, laughing a little. Jason had to put his coffee mug down. “Is _that_ why you’ve been so…? No. Definitely not.”

“But...you have a _kid_ together,” Jason said. “I thought…”

“Yeah, we do,” Roy said. “And that’s always going to matter. Jade’s always going to be important to me because she’s Lian’s mother, and because I _did_ love her once. Part of me always will.”

“But if you love her…”

Roy put his mug down too, and when he moved closer it was with a purposefulness that made Jason’s breath come a little faster. “I’ve loved a lot of people,” he said. “I can’t change that. I _wouldn’t_ change that. But god, Jaybird, did you really think I wouldn’t choose you?”

Jason’s throat clicked. “Yeah?”

“Jason. I came back to _life_ because you said you loved me.” Roy reached for him and then drew back, brow creasing. “Unless you just meant, like, in a platonic friends-and-partners way…?”

Jason shook his head, a little frantically. He couldn’t speak.

“Oh, good. Then yeah.” Roy smiled, and his hand finally curved around Jason’s cheek, where it belonged. “You. I came back for _you_. I want _you_. If you’re cool with the whole, you know, undead single dad thing. Also I’m pretty sure I’m technically homeless right now.”

“ _Roy_ ,” Jason said, putting his hand over Roy’s to hold him in place. He forced himself not to laugh, because if he started laughing, he’d start crying, and he was done with that.

“Gonna kiss you now, okay?” Roy murmured, and Jason nodded, and then Roy’s mouth was on his, his other hand curling into Jason’s hair, and all Jason could think was _how_ and _yes_ and _thank you_.

The flush was back on Roy’s cheekbones when he pulled back. Jason wanted to trace it with his fingers, but his hands had somehow found their way to Roy’s bare waist, and he couldn’t seem to make them let go. Besides, Roy came right back in to lean his forehead against Jason’s.

“Oh, hey, I’ve been stupid in love with you forever, by the way,” he said. “If I didn’t say that before.”

Jason shook his head. “You were kind of a zombie, though,” he managed. “I’ll let it slide.”

Roy grinned, bright and crooked and perfect. “Phew,” he said, leaning in to kiss Jason’s temple, and then his cheek, and then his mouth again, slow and coaxing.

Jason shut his eyes and let himself believe it, believe that Roy was back and _loved_ him and _chose_ him. That he could actually have this, this precious moment barefoot in someone else’s kitchen, and every moment afterwards. That everything he was touching was _real_ : the shift of Roy’s muscles under his palms and the softness of his lips and the wet slick heat of his tongue—

Someone cleared their throat behind him.

Jason pulled back just enough to turn and see that it was Ollie, looking resigned—and possibly a little amused—but not surprised. “Oh, don’t stop on my account,” he said. “It’s only my kitchen. Or should I get the hose?”

Jason tried and failed not to turn red. Roy just rolled his eyes. “You’re pretty high and mighty there considering what I once caught you and Dinah doing on that very table.”

“Like I said, it’s my kitchen,” Ollie said. “Is there coffee?”

“In the pot.”

Ollie walked past them and poured himself a cup, adding a much more reasonable amount of milk and sugar to it than Roy usually did. “So is this a thing?” he asked, nodding a little in Jason’s direction.

Roy slung an arm around Jason’s waist to tuck him against his side. Jason didn’t actually care what Oliver Queen thought of him—but he was glad to have Roy’s arm around him just the same.

“Yeah,” Roy said. “It’s a thing.”

Jason lifted his chin, waiting for Ollie’s reaction. Ollie took a sip of his coffee and wrinkled his nose.

“You always brew it too strong,” he said. “Anyway, you two better put some shirts on. It’s a school day and the girls’ll be down for breakfast in a minute.”

“You hate me,” Jason said before he could catch himself. Roy’s thumb rubbed soothingly along his side.

Ollie raised an eyebrow, then took another sip of coffee. “First of all, I lost the right to tell Roy what to do a long time ago,” he said. “Second, pretty sure you’re the only reason he’s even here to get handsy with anyone in my kitchen at six in the goddamn morning, so I’m withdrawing some of my previous objections, even if I _do_ still think you got an attitude problem. But we can pick a fight about it if it’ll make you feel better.”

Roy cracked up. “You’ll never understand our love for each other and rock and roll, old man!”

“Shut up,” Jason grumbled, even as something anxious in him quieted.

Roy grinned and kissed the side of his head. “Don’t worry, I’m sure Bruce disapproves of me enough for both of our dads.”

Jason sighed, remembering the conversation he and Bruce had had in Switzerland. “No, he thinks you’re good for me,” he said resignedly.

“Well, _now_ I’m mad,” Ollie said. “I didn’t raise you to be approved of by _Batman_ , Roy.”

Jason choked on a surprised laugh. Roy elbowed him and then let go of his waist to take his hand. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Come on, Jay, let’s find you a shirt.”

Jason raised an eyebrow but let Roy pull him from the kitchen. “Is there anything in this house that isn’t green?”

“Oh, sure. I think you’d look _great_ in some of Dinah’s stuff,” Roy said, and Ollie let out an indignant noise behind him.

Roy kissed him again in the stairwell, and on the landing, and in the hall. “The girls are going to catch us,” Jason warned him when Roy had him pressed up against the door to his guest room, but he made no move to get away.

“Eh, they all knew I was crazy about you, they can handle it,” Roy said, but he did pull back after one final kiss. “But you’re right, it’s going to be a zoo in here in a few minutes anyway, we should get moving. Besides…” He ducked his head, looking uncertain for the first time that morning. “I don’t think anyone ever formally introduced you to my daughter.”

Jason leaned back against the door and let himself believe in what was in front of him: Roy, beautiful and happy and _alive_ , smiling shyly at him as the morning sun through the window at the end of the hall brought out his faded freckles and turned his hair to flame. This was real. Jason could have this.

He slipped his hands into Roy’s and smiled back. “I’d love to meet her,” he said.

*

_One Month Later_

“...Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, with Ate at his side come hot from hell shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war,” Jason declared. “That this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.”

Lian stared up at him with big, dark eyes, then giggled.

“Yeah?” Jason asked, brushing her round cheek with a finger. “You think that’s pretty funny, huh?”

“ _Carrion men?_ What the hell are you reciting to her?” Roy asked, walking past them with a cardboard box labeled “Kitchen.”

“Shakespeare. _Julius Caesar_ ,” Jason said. “Unlike you, your daughter has refined tastes. Or she just likes it when I yell ‘Havoc!’” Lian giggled again. “Okay, yeah, it’s the havoc thing.”

“Well, can you cry havoc at her while she’s in her bounce chair and help me with these boxes?” Roy asked. “We’ve only got the U-Haul for another half hour.”

Jason had been enjoying watching Roy’s arms while he carried boxes, but he couldn’t actually let Roy do _all_ the heavy lifting. “Yeah, okay,” he said, and pulled the bounce chair free from between a couple of boxes marked “Living Room,” placing it strategically so that they could keep an eye on Lian and she could watch them working.

“Don’t worry, princess, I’ll give you the real bloody stuff from _Coriolanus_ later,” he promised, strapping her in. Lian dimpled at him and wrapped her hand around his finger, and Jason felt his heart seize with love for her for the eighth or ninth time just that _day_.

But that was par for the course, really. It had been ever since he’d brought Roy home, since he’d learned how to not be terrified of holding a baby or changing a diaper or singing a lullaby. Or of being loved.

It had taken weeks for Roy to get his feet back under him and his paperwork sorted out, to undo everything that had declared him legally dead, but he was finally moving out of Ollie’s guest bedroom and into his own apartment. Well. _Their_ apartment. Jason hadn’t quite closed up shop in Gotham yet, but he’d only been back there three days this past month and he’d hated every second he couldn’t see Roy and know for _sure_ that he was still back in the land of the living.

He’d get over it. Eventually.

The fact that Jason hadn’t locked down his plans hadn’t kept Roy from getting an apartment big enough for three, or promptly handing a set of keys to Jason once he had them. The question of where Lian would live full-time was still up in the air, too, and Roy and Jade had had many long conversations about how to make this work and what would be best for Lian in the long run. But for now, she was with them, getting to know her daddy.

Her daddies, maybe. Roy might put it that way. Jason hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask yet.

It was a lot, Jason knew, to be throwing himself into a life on the other side of the country, with a _partner_ —with everything that word had always meant and all the new, astonishing meanings it carried now—and a child. But holy fuck, he’d never been so happy in his _life_.

He met Roy at the door and accepted a box from him. “Where’s this go?”

“Our bedroom,” Roy said, and Jason had a feeling the stupid smile that accompanied the words was reflected on his own face.

“And here I thought we’d be living in Ollie’s guest room forever,” Jason said.

“Don’t get your hopes up _too_ high,” Roy said with a wink. “We still have to keep it down for the kid.”

Jason felt his cheeks heat up and rolled his eyes when Roy’s grin widened. “Go get another box,” he grumbled, and took his to the bedroom.

It was true that sharing Roy’s bed _had_ been another perk of his new life. Not just because the hushed, breathless sex was incredible, even if they did have to keep quiet, and even if keeping quiet didn’t keep them from being mercilessly teased by Roy’s family every morning. But because Roy had Pit nightmares too, now, and Jason could be there to hold him before he sank too deep, hold him before he screamed loud enough to wake Lian. Jason had never known what a gift being able to be there for someone else was.

If he could banish the nightmares entirely, he would do it in a heartbeat. But Roy only had nightmares because he’d come _back_ —back to a life that held good as well as bad, and all any of them could do was hope it balanced out in the end.

Like Jason had said at the Pit: life hurt. But sometimes the good made up for the pain.

They got the U-Haul unloaded and stood there gazing at the boxes for a minute before Roy had to leave to return the van. Lian stared around her too, not to be left out.

“How does it look like so much work to unpack when most of your stuff is back in Gotham and I was dead for a year?” Roy asked.

“Because you’re lazy?” Jason suggested, even though he was daunted, too. “Oh god, I still have to get all my stuff here from Gotham.”

Roy slung an arm around him. “We’ll figure it out. We’ve got everything we need.”

“If you say something sappy like ‘each other’ I’m gonna vomit,” Jason said, even as he turned in toward Roy’s touch to kiss him.

“I was going to say ‘each other and a credit card that Bruce pays for,’” Roy said. “You still have that, right? I made it clear that that was a condition of you moving in?”

Jason laughed and kissed him again. Lian squawked and held up her arms.

“Aw, you want some loving too?” Roy asked, unstrapping her from her bounce chair and snuggling back in close to Jason, Lian squished between them as he smooched her chubby cheek. She shrieked in delight and whacked Jason in the eye.

“Well, she’s got your right hook,” Jason said, wincing but kissing her other cheek anyway. It was right there, after all.

“She’ll have the best of all of us. You, me, and Jade,” Roy said, and Jason had to tuck his face against Lian’s hair for a minute. Roy’s free hand curved around the back of Jason’s neck and just stayed there, steadying him.

Sometimes the good made up for the pain. Standing here with Roy and Lian in their new home, it was easy to remember.

“All of us,” Jason agreed, looking up again, and let Roy’s smile remind him that he wasn’t alone anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes on Canon: Obvs the OG and New Teen Titans love their Roy very much but I also miss his relationships with Damage and Impulse, who he had a big brotherly relationship with when they were little baby Titans in the mid-90s. Also, that painting of Robin Hood hung on the wall of Ollie's house for like the entire Grell run. He'd get drunk and yell at it sometimes. Jason should be honored.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who came on this self-indulgent journey with me! You are the best.

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hi on tumblr!](https://pluckyredhead.tumblr.com/)


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